Some good clips from the campaign.

My US mates keep asking me about the Sex Party. They tend to be a little shy and inhibited over there, and haven’t got a real fun party. This one is a ripper from them, themed on the Howard policy, Workchoices.

The next two are faux ads developed by the Chaser comedy team. The first is one aimed at the Greens which many of us tend to think is actually pretty accurate.

Then this one which is just as good, slapping the Liberals.


And the there is Angry Kevin, a send up of the Hungry Jacks "Angry Angus," ad.

Mating dance of the independents.

Cartoon; By Bill Leak.

After a week of waiting for a decision on who is going to form the next government we are still watching Julia fluttering her eyelashes at Bob Katter, and vice versa, while Abbott and Barnaby peruse the internet for pheromones that might do the trick. It’s a bit like the mating dance of death, well for the country at least.

The independents will probably will back the Liberals, as will the WA National who defeated longtime Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey in a three cornered contest and now wants to be seen as independent. (There is no love lost between the WA Libs and Nats.)

One of the reasons for them acting all coy and demure apart from getting their wish list granted is that from now on they are unable to hide behind their irrelevance making self righteous populist platitudes. Now horror of horror, they are relevant for the first time, and may be coming to realize that the eyes of the nation are on them, and their decisions will be remembered.



While Gillard will pay any price for what they are selling Abbott to his credit, is negotiating and not giving in to all demands. Their demand for a commitment to a three-year term is irrational given the instability resulting from a minority government with a hostile Greens controlled Senate. The best thing would be for a party to form a government, see if it can be made to work, and when it fails, go to a new election.



I have a feeling that in the long run, Abbott might be better off to tell them to go, jump and let Gillard form a government which will be forced back to the polls fairly quickly and be smashed in the process.

 Minority governments are inherently unstable in their own right. Trying to hold one together with the aid of a bunch of guys who have never had to take responsibility because they can always blame the other parties will be impossible.

The Senators who were elected this time do not actually take their seats until next July as the Senate is term limited. When this happens the Greens get control with the balance of power which raises the possibility of two elections in the near future. The House of representatives can be put up for election again if it becomes unworkable, but for the Senate to go to the polls requires a double dissolution which needs to be triggered by refusal to pass vital legislation.

This may not be all bad news; if the government is unworkable and cannot get its legislation passed, they can't do anything to us, can they?

Resource Sterilisation endangers National Security.

By: Viv Forbes
Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition

Extreme conservation policies are sterilising so much of Australia’s resources that it is becoming a threat to our national security.

Most wars are about land and resources.

In the colonial era, aggressive Europeans swarmed into Africa, the Americas and Australia attracted by underused land, minerals and timber. More recently, Hitler invaded Eastern Europe and Russia in the search for “living space” and access to Black Sea oil and Japan went to war attracted by the resources of South East Asia and Australia.

Australia is the odd man of Asia – a huge land mass with a small population.

Our populous and rapidly developing northern neighbours need the primary products that Australia has in abundance – food, fibres, minerals and energy. So they note with disbelief the way in which Australia is sterilising these valuable resources.

They see precious agricultural and forest land being swallowed by National Parks, World Heritage Reservations, Environmental Parks, Wild Rivers Declarations, Indigenous reservations and bans on land clearing. Unbelievably we have nine protected Wild Rivers, 11 World Heritage properties, 516 National Parks, 2,700 designated conservation areas and huge areas of government leasehold and aboriginal land. The latest proposal is a continuous conservation corridor running from Melbourne to Atherton. In all of these areas, agricultural and mining production are prohibited or increasingly restricted.

Our neighbours look on in amazement as foresters are locked out of State Forests, water courses become no-go zones for graziers and irrigation water is withdrawn from farmers and orchardists. Soon the whole Coral Sea will be locked up and beaches made off limits to fishermen. Future Australians are in danger of becoming a nation of peasants, poachers and smugglers in their own land.

Asia needs our abundant energy resources of coal, gas, oil shale and uranium. But they watch in disbelief as uranium mining is banned, gas is wasted in power generation, mining taxes are increased and there are threats to tax carbon and close our coal mines and power stations.

History has no examples where a small number of self-indulgent people have managed to squat on valuable land and idle resources forever. And our historic protectors are no longer invincible – the Royal Navy no longer controls the Indian Ocean or the South China Sea and the US Navy is no longer unchallenged in the Pacific.

Today the refugee flotilla is unarmed. If we continue sterilising our resources of land, oceans, food, minerals and energy, future fleets may not submit peacefully to Australian boarding parties.

Farming Carbon Credits:
The ALP has offered to buy votes from Australian farmers with carbon credits for growing trees.

Farmers would be more impressed if the ALP offered to pay for the millions of carbon credits recently stolen from them using tree clearing bans and other land use restrictions.

And once all farmland is covered by carbon credit forests, what shall we eat?

More Green Energy Dreams:

Zero Carbon Australia by 2020 Plan.

A Melbourne group calling itself “Beyond Zero Emissions” has produced a plan “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan”. No coal power, petrol cars, diesel trucks or air trips. (Presumably they are also going to stop exhaling by 2020).

This will be the new bible for anti-carbon energy crowd.

This plan has been evaluated by competent energy people who have revised the assumptions and cost estimates. They conclude:

• The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan has significantly underestimated the cost and time scale required to implement such a plan. 


• Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate.


• The wholesale electricity costs would increase nearly 10 times above current costs to $500/MWh, not the $120/MWh claimed in the Plan.


• The total electricity demand in 2020 is expected to be 44% higher than proposed: 449 TWh compared to the 325 TWh presented in the Plan.


• The Plan has inadequate reserve capacity margin to ensure network reliability remains at current levels. The total installed capacity needs to be increased by 65% above the proposed capacity in the Plan to 160 GW compared to the 97 GW used in the Plan.


• The Plan's implementation timeline is unrealistic. We doubt any solar thermal plants, of the size and availability proposed in the plan, will be on line before 2020. We expect only demonstration plants will be built until there is confidence that they can be economically viable.


• The Plan relies on many unsupported assumptions, which we believe are invalid; two of the most important are:


1. A quote in the Executive Summary “The Plan relies only on existing, proven, commercially available and costed technologies.”


2. Solar thermal power stations with the performance characteristics and availability of baseload power stations exist now or will in the near future.


The Last Word on the Election.

If the ALP/Green Coalition wins this election, carbon taxes and emissions trading will suddenly rise from the dead. Our advice remains the same:

Number every square.
Put Climate Sceptics first and the Greens last.

Make your own choices from there on, but the Nationals, some Liberals and most of the other minor parties are strongly opposed to carbon Ration-N-Tax Schemes. (We forgot to mention One Nation as another group sceptical of the idea that man’s production of carbon dioxide has harmful effects on anything.)

Editors note: The Liberal Democrats (LDP), policy is that the government should 'do nothing' on carbon, as it is pointless and probably counterproductive. We preference the CS high, and the Greens last and major parties well down.

My new LDP website.

Image; The Liberal Democratic Party logo.

Owing to difficulties in getting media exposure in this election and the need to build a more solid base for the future I have decided to start a new site on the Ning social networking group Agmates. They have been around for a while and have a solid group involved, hosting a number of communities within it. The name may be a little disconcerting for some of my American readers, but we use the term liberal in a vastly different context here.

In Australia the authoritarian big government left have not been able to hijack the word as we have a party which started its life as a liberal party of sorts, called the Liberal Party. As they have become an authoritarian conservative big government party, those of us who have classical liberal leanings have had to form our own party, which we describe as moderate libertarian.

Anyway meet Jim's Liberal Democrat forum.

I have decided to take a relatively aggressive stance as I am finding that people here are thoroughly sick of nanny state policies from the major parties and are looking for something more attuned to individual freedom, which is one of the characteristics of real Australia. One of the joys of my work is that I spend a fair bit of time out in areas where the law and rules of the elites don't reach and people are real characters and can be themselves.

So, whats it like out there? Its not the world of mayhem and mass killings the state tells us we would degenerate into if they were not there to prevent it. Its a peaceful productive world, where people do their own thing and don't give a shit about rules other than don't piss your neighbour off, and generally just get on with their lives in line with their aspirations. Occasionally they come together in order to support common goals, like helping the flying doctor service, or the rural fire brigade.

And there are no bloody community organisers. Hell we just do that for ourselves. That is one of the many reasons we don't understand the US system. Just what the hell is a Community Organiser, and just why the hell do the Yanks need them? Seriously fellas if there is something a community needs, just call a meeting to toss it about, and if it is really important it will be done by you.

If I am unlucky enough to be elected, (Canberra is a miserable cold place) I have no vision of what we should become, other than free. Personally I feel that those who have their own 'vision for the Australian people' should be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail before they manage to do too much damage.

My message to Australia is, "Its OK to feel good about yourselves."

Battle on US Social Security.

This post is one from Libertarian Republican which I have been asked to post. I am occasionally featured as a contributor on that site.

The Social security situation is one of the most divisive of modern times. The reason for this is that it has been run for generations as a ponzi scheme in which the contributors from the current generation are paying those from the previous generations, whose contributions have already been spent. Had the money from generations past been invested for future needs this situation where the whole edifice is unsustainable would not have occurred. There have been no savings, no investments, and the contributions from the past have been pissed up against the wall by governments on vote buying.

In Australia we have been fortunate in that Paul Keating was far sighted enough to recognise the looming disaster, and was strong enough to implement a national superannuation scheme. This will be a substantial advantage with the coming retirement of baby boomers. It is however regrettable that it was not done earlier by Fraser, Whitlam, or better still, Menzies.

Now from LR: -

During the seven fat years, Pharaoh taxed the people at the rate of twenty percent to fill his storehouses with grain. Then, during the seven years of famines, he did not simply return the people's grain to them, but instead used the grain to reduce the people to bondage. Today, we call this Social Security. The purpose of Social Security should be to secure financial independence and even wealth for all those who work regularly, not to convert those who work into government dependents upon their retirement. -- Dr. Clifford F. Thies, Eldon R. Lindsay Chair of Free Enterprise
Professor of Economics and Finance, Shenandoah University
by Eric Dondero

Our conservative Republican friends may be a bit too timid to admit to it, but we libertarian Republicans will say straight out, loudly and boldly, that Yes, we Do Want to Fully Privatize Social Security!

From The Hill, "Dems plan to attack GOP on Social Security," Aug. 9:

House Democrats are planning more than 100 events around this week’s anniversary of Social Security to attack Republicans who want to reform the popular entitlement.
Democrats and interest groups on the left have scheduled “birthday parties” and other events to highlight Saturday’s 75th anniversary of the program signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt.
A Democratic leadership aide said Republicans are “highly vulnerable” on both Social Security and Medicare.
“This is a party that said they want Medicare to wither on the vine and want to privatize Social Security,” the aide said.

Burn your Social Security Card!

Curiously, in the entire piece there's no mention whatsoever of the Libertarian Party which advocates in their platform complete privatization.
From LP.org:

Libertarians believe you should be able to opt out of Social Security and invest your money in your own personal retirement account. An account that you own and control - one that politicians can't get their hands on.

Republicans and Democrats say it can't be done - that your Social Security taxes are needed to pay benefits to today's retirees. Instead of letting you invest in your own future, they want you to have faith that someone else will pay your benefits when it comes time for you to retire.

Although most won't admit it publicly, their "solutions" to the Social Security crises all come down to some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.

Libertarians know that there's a better way.
Countries like Chile, Mexico, Britain, and Australia have successfully made the transition from their failed Social Security systems to healthy systems based on individual retirement accounts.

The Libertarian Party even went so far as to sponsor nationwide rallies in the 1980s to burn Social Security cards, and urge its members to drop out of the S.S. system.
Republicans gain Libertarian voters with boldness; not bland pastels
So here we have the Libertarian Party criticizing Republicans for not backing real Social Security privatization.

And if you think the LP is "fringe," consider for a moment their candidate for US Senate in North Carolina is currently polling between 8 to 10%.

But of course, the Dems can't attack the Libertarian Party. They have to portray the Republican Party as the "extremist Privatizers."

The Republican Party needs to not only appeal to moderate Centrists, but the libertarian swing voter, as well. Libertarians are not pacified by namby pamby proposals of soft reform, or tinkering around the edges.

A bold Republican stance for full privatization of Social Security and other failed government programs will undoubtably attract that hardcore libertarian vote. Without such boldness, the Republican candidate is likely to loose 3, 4 or 5% or maybe even like North Carolina with a strong articulate Libertarian candidate on the ballot, as much as 8 to 10% of the vote on their libertarian flank.

The job of us libertarian Republicans is to help the GOP appeal to that flank.
So, go ahead Democrats. Keep playing up the "Republicans want to Privatize Social Security" line. You only make our job much more easier.

Dr. Thies is a longtime Republican, former National Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, and currently Senior Editor of Libertarian Republican. Eric Dondero is a former Senior Aide to US Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), 1997-2003.

Housing Minister wants to make Housing More Expensive!

I guess in standing for the Senate, I am going to have to be a bit more couth and cultured than I am used to being. I am however going to have to get some good advice as to running a critique on this sort of thing without calling Tanya a silly bitch.

From Liberty Australia:


Note the sheer obscene arrogance of this idiot, in that she thinks she can decide for you what you need. You are spending your money building a home, which is expensive enough already, but if it is bigger than she thinks you deserve to have she is going to make it hard for you. This is a party that believes they should decide what’s fair for you to earn, own, eat, drive, and every other aspect of your lives.

Labor and the Greens, are Big Government personified, the ultimate in Nanny State.

Bawb, this man needs your help.

This is Barnaby Joyce, a Liberal National Party Senator.



He represents a party that voted for gun control before he became a Senator.

Reports indicate that he can't make the damn thing fire, and I am wondering if you can help figure out why?

Cash for Clunkers from Top Gear.

This came from my mate Angry Exile.

I posted on this scheme a while ago when Gillard proposed it. It is apparently also in vogue in England, a dumb idea is sweeping the world. Here is the Top Gear boys take on it:



They make a great point about the waste of energy in an attempt to save fuel.

Green Car Policies are Defective and should be Recalled.

By Viv Forbes, Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the massive subsidies to the green car industry and to rich buyers of green car toys.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that to waste taxpayer funds helping foreign car manufacturers to produce cars that consumers don’t want is bad policy.

“Worse still is a policy that encourages people to trash a roadworthy car and buy a trendy new one they do not need.”

Forbes explained:

“To collect, transport and scrap one car and build and deliver another one costs a lot in money, metals, and energy.

“These misguided policies benefit car manufacturers, car dealers, car financiers and some consumers. Everyone else, including the environment, is a loser.

“None of the so called green cars are really green.

“Electric motors, compressed air motors and hydrogen “fuel” are promoted as clean and green, but none of them are sources of energy. All of them need conventional electric power to provide their stored energy.

“Electric cars must fill their batteries from a power point. Compressed air cars must fill their tanks from a compressor which probably uses electricity. And a hydrogen car, if one ever appears, must fill its tank from a refinery using heaps of electricity to produce hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons.

“And where will the electricity come from? In Australia right now 93% of electricity comes from combustion of hydrocarbons such as coal, gas and oil. That will not change dramatically or quickly without putting the lights out. And a dramatic switch to “green” cars plus bans and taxes on hydrocarbon energy increases the chance of that.

“Electric cars are nifty and quiet, and may reduce harmful concentrations of hot exhaust gases in city air, but in Australia they will run mainly on carbon fuel. There will be zero reduction in the production of carbon dioxide (as if that matters anyway).

“The market is the best judge whether diesel, hybrid, electric, petrol or compressed air cars are used. The answer will vary from family to family and from city to country.

“For too long governments have been throwing subsidies at foreign car companies and “green” car buyers. Now they are pushing low cost cars out of the market with their “big bucks for old bombs” giveaway.

The new family car?

“Subsidies always encourage waste of the subsidised product – it is not a sustainable policy. The marginal savings in fuel consumption will never compensate for this extravagance.

“Green car subsidies are dud policies and should be subject to an immediate recall notice.”

Go here for a report on how electric cars will create a surge in demand for electricity in Britain.

Note: A Bill currently before the US Senate provides that 400,000 electric cars will be virtually given away at low cost -- or perhaps no cost -- to people living in "selected communities diverse in population" and "demographics." The bill also requires that any new construction or remodel of an existing structure must include the installation of proper hookups for charging an electric vehicle. So even if you have no intention of owning such a car, adding that extra bedroom will require you to spend additional money to install battery-charging infrastructure in your garage. The “land of the free” has become the “land of the free car” (built by the government owned car company of course).