Sustainable living; more advice from the green lobby

The model eco-house. H/t and image: The Agitator

Kermit The Frog seems to have been on to something in a big way in his song, “It’s not easy, being green” if the folks over at Times Free Press are correct. After years of being lambasted with propaganda on the joys of living ‘sustainably’ it is probably time to look at what we have to do to at least make some sort of effort to please our green elitists.

These people are never pleased for any length of time; always ready to step forward with more demands the moment anyone takes a step back to accommodate them. Some such as Paul Krugman demonstrate the irrationality associated with the belief that CO2 is driving GW. Paul though is one of the saner ones. Some are calling for a eugenics based approach to the problem with calls for the populations of developed countries to stop having children, some expressing a wish for humanity to be wiped from the face of the planet,

Prince Phillip for example wants to be reincarnated as a lethal virus to wipe out humanity. There is though, some speculation as to whether this is due to extreme environmentalism or is simply caused by fifty generations of inbreeding among the royal houses of Europe. Here are a few tips on an ecological lifestyle:

… Today, the average home size in the United States is around 2,700 square feet. That's about five times more than environmentalists think you need. The founder of treehugger.com, for instance, just moved into a sustainable home many consider a model for the future. At 420 square feet, the home comes with movable walls to create separate spaces when you need them.

Environmentalist guru Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, notes that a 60 percent reduction in fossil fuel usage — a number many greenies advocate — would result in a dramatic reduction of carbon emissions per person. Sounds great, right?

"If you carpooled [six miles per day], you'd have about three pounds of CO2 left in your daily ration -- enough to run a highly efficient refrigerator. Forget your computer, your TV, your stereo, your stove, your dishwasher, your water heater, your microwave, your water pump, your clock. Forget your light bulbs, compact fluorescent or not.” …

But surely your electric vehicle will get you around greenly? Unfortunately, no. A recent study by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership suggests electric powertrains actually have a bigger carbon footprint than internal combustion engines once you take manufacturing the battery and producing the electricity into account. Electric cars don't even out with their gas counterparts for about 80,000 miles

The Worldwatch Institute notes the problem with that [renewables] approach, "[I]n order to produce enough energy over the next 25 years to replace most of what is supplied by fossil fuels, the world would need to build 200 square meters of solar photovoltaic panels every second plus 100 square meters of solar thermal every second plus 24 3-megawatt wind turbines every hour nonstop for the next 25 years.

It is probably best not to do all of this straight away. Somewhere right now, there is a greenie writing a missive on just how ecologically irresponsible these recommendations are, and how they do not even begin to address the problem.

USA; so like Australia, at least politically

Images: No to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

When you think about it, there are a hell of a lot of parallels between the US and Australia, although, while they have Obama, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope, we have Julia Gillard, no cash and no bloody hope (old one, sorry).

Other than that it sometimes appears that both leaders plagiarize each other in their statements. Obama has “tried real hard, Gillard has “done the best she can,” Obama has done so much he has not spent enough time trying to get the message across to the unwashed masses, Gillard, ditto.

But, wait, there’s more. Obama is up for election against an opponent who is the closest thing to the character of Arthur Daley in ‘Minder’ that most of us have encountered, Gillard is opposed by Tony Abbott, who poses as Gillard lite; both only being acceptable because the current leader is worse.

The author, Douglas Adams, was probably the most capable social commentator of his time and wrote the following passage in, “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish:”

[Ford Prefect] ... On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. …

... Tell me about the lizards."

Ford shrugged again.

"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

This kind of rings a bell; doesn’t it?

Batman, a fascist one percenter with libertarian roots?

Cartoon: By Glen Foden.

H/t Newsbusters

Where would we be without a little ideology with our breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the entertainment afterwards? Without the guidance of the liberal elite you may well finding yourself eating Chick-fil-A without realizing just how politically incorrect this is.

Now, film critics are warning us that excessive exposure to Batman will cause your children to put on brown shirts and wreak havoc on the lovely ‘Occupy’ people on behalf of the one percent, or something like that:

… Andrew O'Heir, in his review for Salon.com, hyperbolically warned that the Batman franchise ended with "a gloomy, magnificent (and fascistic) spectacle." The article's headline described it as director "Christopher Nolan's evil masterpiece.”

The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday extolled the film as a near classic, but lectured, "'The Dark Knight Rises' becomes an almost spiritual parable of anti-populism and unshakable faith in law, order and the morally superior wisdom of the One Percent." She also pointed out that the film hews "faithfully to Batman’s libertarian leanings.”

L.A. Times film critic Steven Zeitchik appeared astounded that the Occupy motives of the film's villain, Bane, are portrayed negatively:

Contradictions abound in "The Dark Knight Rises." There is a man (Thomas Hardy’s Bane) who urges populist unrest against a monied elite and a woman (Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle) who speaks the language of social justice, stirringly asking a member of the 1% "how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” Yet both are, for at least chunks of the movie, villains — in Bane's case, murderously and maliciously so. …

... In the film's most blatantly political scene, Bane whips supporters into a populist frenzy as they literally rip wealthy people out of their penthouses to beat and rob them. It’s a jarring viewing experience. The language of revolt and justice would seem to call for sympathy with the rebels. But the violence of their attacks makes you side, discomfittingly and reflexively, with the pampered rich. …

Batman’s political status has been an open secret in libertarian circles for years; it’s been part of our conspiracy for worldwide domination, taking over all government powers and making people do whatever they like. Unfortunately, of late he has been a little careless in concealing his true agenda.

The LIVE FREE sticker on the batmobile could be easily overlooked, and few people recognized him when he appeared as a delegate at the Libertarian Party Convention. But when Rahm Emanuel lit up the distress beacon over Chicago and found the bat image had been replaced by a coiled serpent with the words “Don’t tread” beneath it, our days of secrecy were numbered.

But, do Google promotions use Yahoo mail accounts?

Allow me to begin by expressing my pleasure at the efficacy of the Google spam filter, something this site’s official spammer, Anonymous will attest to just as soon as the dickwit wakes up that he isn’t getting past it. He has just made the twentieth attempt today pushing some money making site, presumably one that pays idiots to place unwelcome commercial spam on websites.

While I exult in first amendment rights, free speech and all that goes with it, attempts to advertise on this site without paying for it violates my property rights and any company hiring these people to do so have no respect for the rights of others and should be treated with distrust. If they have no respect for others, they are probably unreliable to trade with.

I have been pretty lucky lately, what with African princesses wanting to have a relationship with me and share the millions left to them that has to get out of the country (I’ll bet they all look like Halle Berry), bankers wanting to launder money through my account, and of course the ubiquitous person of the same surname as me who died intestate after depositing millions in bank accounts in Europe.

Then there was the London Lottery, which I won without even having a ticket in the first place. To give them their full dues, they tried for months to get me to reply and claim my two and a half million pounds, but I guess I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

The Philadelphia Lottery were so concerned about my failure to supply the details they required to pay me the $23.2 million I won that they had an ‘FBI special agent’ contact me to let me know he would be investigating why if I failed to comply with their request. I figured though, that an FBI special agent would probably enjoy the challenge of finding all of that information himself.

It might require him to check me out on Google or friend me on Facebook, but hey, what’s a little inconvenience to those guys? I just hope he doesn’t think that if I have nothing to hide, then …

The curious one today was from Google Promotions, oddly in Buckingham Palace Rd, London, which reads:

We wish to congratulate you once again on this note, for being part of our winners selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active users of the Google search engine and the Google ancillary services. Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and patronage to the Google search engine. Google is now the biggest search engine Worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, we ran an online e-mail beta test which your email address won Ј950,000.00 GBP {Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling}. …

After asking for my personal details, it asks me to reply to a Mrs Patience Wheatcroft youngchang@yahoo.cn, which I gather is in China. I understand Google is an international company but it seems surprising to have their promotions staff using Yahoo accounts.

By the way Google, if this is a genuine offer I am quite open to receiving the money. In the meantime I will wait with baited breath to see whether Anonymous posts his spam on this post so I can find out whether he reads them.

Government waste and intransigence sinks NDIS

Currently we are seeing numerous reports in the media of people with profound disabilities who were counting on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), coming into effect in order to gain some assistance for themselves and those caring for them. It cannot be argued that people caring for family members with substantial disabilities need some help, especially as they age.

Unfortunately, these reports then tend to lambast the premiers of ‘the four big states’ governed by the coalition, mainly New South Wales, and Victoria. Queensland and Western Australia seem to be getting a pass in Gillard’s rhetoric.

These states are all undergoing the process of recovery from years of Labor governments and the accompanying indebtedness associated with that. Labor states do not have this problem as they still live in cloud cuckoo land where the answer to spending beyond your means is just going out and borrowing more.

Life in Queensland over the past ten years has resembled being trapped in an episode of the Simpsons in which Bart gets hold of Homer’s credit card and goes wild looking for the next thing to splash out on. It’s been like carnival time on the taxpayer’s dime to the extent where the proceeds of the current mining boom have been pissed away on profligacy well into the next generation.

What Labor is proposing is nothing like the recommendation of the Productivity Commission, which was for the Commonwealth to fund the scheme to the extent of $6.5 billion per year, although some estimates of the full cost are in the $15 billion range. What Gillard is proposing, is for a ‘limited trial’ to run for three years with the offer of nearly one billion dollars with the rest being picked up by the states, who have the worry of being left holding the bag afterwards.

The states, far from being the miserable pack of uncaring Scrooges they are depicted as are already funding disability services to the tune of more than $7 billion per year. The opposition has offered bipartisan support for the original proposal, but has been labeled a ‘spoiler’ for rejecting the current effort.

It is doubtful that Gillard actually wants the scheme to go ahead and is probably grandstanding. She has rejected the Productivity Commission’s original recommendation for something else, rejected Abbott’s offer of support, and slapped away the states proposal for funding. Instead, like her Malaysia proposal on people smuggling, she is opting for something nobody else will support.

Given the indebtedness of both the Commonwealth and the states, it is doubtful that we can afford this in any case.

Gillard still serious about press control

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson shows how press regulation works.

A free press is dependant on the age-old principle in free societies of freedom of speech. Such freedom like any other has to be absolute and unabridged otherwise it ceases to exist as any limitations on the right to state facts, even ones that are unpalatable to the government of the day, or opinions unliked by the powers that be, denies this right.

Media organizations have a responsibility to accurately pass on the facts, not because of any legislative requirement, but because the failure to do so will cause them to lose the trust of the viewing, reading, or listening public, the bread and butter of their income.

Since the Greens became a relevant force with the balance of power in the senate, they have been subjected to a great deal more media scrutiny, which they have come to resent. The hacking inquiry in the UK gave them their opportunity for revenge via their control of the Gillard government, which was happy to oblige with an inquiry into the need for press control.

Gillard has used the threat of legislative action against the press as a blunt instrument against stroppy editors, backsliding journalists, and radio ‘shock jocks’ in order to cut back on criticism. This was especially apparent in relation to the ‘Wilson affair’, which has been dispatched with extreme prejudice but continues to simmer under the surface:

When the media turns on a government it is not simply a case of journalists and editors suddenly deciding to change the government as some sort of good idea at the time. It happens because that government is performing so badly that there is little that is good to say about them. Any form of government control that prevents the press from doing their reporting in an objective manner will only serve to hasten the demise of the media that succumbs to that pressure.

Scott Brown targets “You didn’t build that;” Cain; rich is cool

Embattled Senator Scott Brown has pulled off the best ad of the campaign anywhere in America yet, slamming the President and Elisabeth Warren over their idiotic statements that entrepreneurs don’t make it on their own. Brown holds the ‘Kennedy seat’ in the senate and is always going to battle to keep it:


He makes clever use of statements by Democrat Presidents, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton who hark back to the days when the party was more reality based and had an understanding that business, not food stamps, was the driving force behind the nation’s engine room. Ronald Reagan and Ford also appear, then the comparison is made with the fatuous statements of Obama and the bellicose anti business rant of Warren.

Meanwhile, Herman Cain, who has become a valued campaigner since dropping out of the contest answers with, “rich is cool.” An interesting aspect to Cain is that in spite of his even greater success in life, he quotes his father’s efforts to lift himself out of an almost certain life of abject poverty to reach success:

… As far as Obama is concerned, anyone who is successful got that way because of the system, by which he means the government. Democrats sometimes refer to the rich as “the winners in life’s lottery,” which is to say they merely got lucky in a game of chance – and that’s why they need to fork over so much of their wealth in taxes, so Democrats can “spread the wealth around” to all those other smart, hardworking people, who just didn’t happen to win life’s lottery.

What a load of crap. To listen to these people, you’d think being rich was the worst thing anyone could do.

Well I’ve got news for them: Being rich is cool. Not only that, but when someone has become rich, others should endeavor to learn as much as they can about how he or she did it, instead of resenting it and dismissing it as merely lucking out because of all the help the government provided.

The best example I can give you is my dad. He started his adult life in the 1940 with nothing but the clothes on his back. At one point he worked three jobs at the same time. I suppose wealth is relative to everyone’s situation, but my dad had a goal of getting rich as he defined it – and he achieved his goal.

Did the government deserve any credit for his success? When he walked off that small dirt farm in Tennessee, the road wasn’t even paved. I’m not saying there were no government functions that worked well and benefited him. Of course there were. But they were the same ones that benefited everybody else. My dad achieved his particular goals because of his particular dedication, his good plan and his hard work. And yes, he was perfectly within his rights to be proud of himself for being so smart and working so hard.

And let’s be honest: It was true then, and it’s even truer today, that when you get rich you largely do it in spite of the government – its rules, its regulations, its confiscatory tax policies . . . and now the tendency of certain leaders to assail you for your success.

The coolest thing about rich people is that, in order to get rich, you have to make your skill and your capital work for other people. Instead of ripping Bain Capital for its success, the Obama Administration and the media should study what Bain did and how it did it. Bain created thousands of jobs – many more on a net basis than it eliminated via strategic layoffs – because it made smart business decisions and built successful enterprises. …

Why the hell is it, that Cain is better at defending Romney’s record than Romney is?

Australia's refugee fiasco

Apparently our asylum seekers know whose boss:

They observe that many asylum-seekers appear well clothed and organised. Apparently a sailor recently was admonished by an asylum-seeker who wanted more care taken with his bag because it contained a laptop. Another sailor lamented; "Last I checked, I was not a baggage handler at the airport, but a sailor in the Royal Australian Navy.” – The Australian.

The latest tendency of people smugglers to leave the Indonesian coastline and ring up the Australian rescue services to be picked up by the Navy has spawned the image on the left.

Since the Labor government of Kevin Rudd abandoned the ‘Pacific Solution’ of the Howard era, boat arrivals have been steadily accelerating. At the end of the Howard government, boat arrivals had virtually stopped while the humanitarian intake was still going on. Essentially there was no incentive for people to jump the queue and end up in detention centers rather than wait for standard processing.

Now it has reached the point where those wishing to enter legally have little chance of doing so as the current rate of boat arrivals is set to exceed our entire refugee intake for the year. Today’s total was 150, and the total for the month so far is 1,200:

… His hopes, and those of a generation of displaced people in camps around the world, are being crushed by a gross distortion in Australia's humanitarian program, caused by the flood of asylum-seeker boats. People such as Mr Omar in Kenya's giant Dadaab camp do not have the money or access to people-smugglers and their boats. He has no choice but to apply through proper channels for the fast-shrinking number of humanitarian places being offered to those who do not arrive in Australia by boat. …

… This is a dark side of the asylum-seeker debate that is frequently ignored by proponents of liberal onshore processing of boat arrivals. The world's poorest and most helpless asylum-seekers are being increasingly displaced by those who, while also desperate, at least have the financial means to self-select and pay people-smugglers for a passage to Australia.

Since 1996 Australia has capped its total humanitarian intake at about 13,000 by linking its onshore intake, which includes asylum-seeker boat arrivals, with its offshore intake, which includes both the refugee and special humanitarian category. So a rise in the onshore category (mostly boat arrivals) leads directly to a reduction in the offshore category in order to stay under the government's self-imposed 13,700 humanitarian cap.

The government has attempted to bring in its own version of the Pacific Solution, only to avoid making it the same as the Howard one which it stigmatized; it wants to do the processing in Malaysia, rather than Nauru. The Opposition would be happy to oblige but for the fact that Malaysia has not signed the refugee convention and some rather disturbing stories have emerged on the treatment of these people over there.

Gillard is effectively in coalition with the Greens who are for open slather and will not agree to any proposal for offshore processing. All she would have to do would be to drop her insistence on Malaysia to have an agreement in place which would work and the problem would be solved.

Is Coal Dirty? Some Facts on Coal Combustion

By Viv Forbes assisted by volunteer editors.
The Carbon Sense Coalition

We are winning the war about Man-made Global Warming.

But about half of the population still think that the carbon tax will do some good. Why? It is all about "cleaning up dirty coal energy".

The seeds of public concern were sewn with Penny Wong's Machiavellian linking of "carbon" and "pollution". She was assisted by the gross stupidity of the coal industry leadership in promoting nonsense like carbon sequestration as a "clean coal" option. The public naturally assumed "if they need to spend billions to produce "clean coal", obviously we are now using "dirty coal". This generation of coal industry leaders is more culpable than the greens – they should have known better – they have betrayed their shareholders, their employees and the nation.

The whole "dirty coal" program was assisted by the continual portrayal by alarmist media and government propagandists of power station cooling towers belching "pollution". As carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, this is clearly a lie. What is seen are clouds of water vapour with no more pollution potential than wispy white cumulus clouds or boiling dark nimbus thunder-heads.


The wispy white vapour is steam, from the cooling towers, as harmless as what comes out of a boiling kettle. The tall stack is the Exhaust Stack, emitting mostly invisible harmless natural gases:
– nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and argon.
They all came from the atmosphere in the first place.

The climax of this all was a letter published in the Queensland Times of Ipswich, a town founded on coal mining, describing carbon dioxide as "one of many lethal pollutants released by coal combustion".

What are the facts on coal combustion?

When we burn any carbon fuel such as coal, oil, wood, gas, grass, candle sticks, cardboard or cow manure, it produces several gases. Burning a typical Australian thermal coal in air would produce mainly nitrogen (68%), carbon dioxide (21%), water vapour (7%), oxygen (1%), argon (1%) and ash (2%).

So 98% by weight of coal combustion products (the first five) are natural gases merely being recycled to the atmosphere from whence they came. None are toxic. All are invisible except for water vapour.

To describe carbon dioxide as a "lethal air pollutant" is an irresponsible lie – it is surprising to see such rubbish in print. Carbon dioxide is the most important and essential atmospheric plant food, without which there would be no plants, no herbivores (which live on plants), and no carnivores (which live on herbivores).

Our coal is simply another form of trees and plants that grew in Australian soils in a previous era. Ash is unburnt mineral matter that comes naturally from the soil and should go back there. Almost all of the ash is now captured in modern coal fired power stations, but is released freely in bush fires, barbeques, wood stoves, cow manure cookers and open air cremations.

Soot is a product of incomplete combustion and is not produced in modern, well-designed power stations. It is no more dangerous than burnt toast.

It is true that some coals can produce some SOX (oxides of sulphur) and NOX (oxides of nitrogen) but these are caught in modern filters and cleaners. Only small traces enter the air. They could be annoying, and would be dangerous if concentrated in city air, but EVERY normal component of coal is an essential plant nutrient, and far from being invariably toxic, is often in short supply in the broader environment. Anyone who raises crops or animals often needs to supplement soils, pastures or animal feeds with nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc and selenium to name a few.

The few coal combustion products that are genuinely toxic, such as mercury, occur rarely and in tiny quantities. If present, special filters are used to ensure they are not released. Australian coals are generally very low in mercury, indeed lower than in the average earth environment. Naturally occurring rocks containing mercury (as found at Cinnabar in Queensland), dental amalgams and the new "green" fluoro light bulbs represent a far greater mercury danger.

In Earth's long history, today's level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is very low and the green world will benefit greatly from any additional carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere. That is why nurserymen add carbon dioxide to their greenhouses.

Here is a detailed report on coal combustion products:

Carbon and Carbon Dioxide – Clearing up the Confusion:

Clearing the smog of Beijing with “Coal by Wire”:

New Zealand hookers buckle street signs

Kiwi’s seem to be having a problem with prostitution at present. It is not that they are in short supply, nor are the customers dissatisfied; but apparently they are playing havoc with the street signs by using them as a soliciting aid. It seems that they are rather strong and robust girls, and when they use the street signs for pole dancing they tend to bend, buckle and break them:

Dozens of traffic signs have been destroyed by prostitutes performing pole-dances in the street to attract clients, officials in New Zealand's biggest city have revealed.

More than 40 poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand, it is claimed. The signs, bearing legally required notices such as parking restrictions, are thought to have cost ratepayers thousands of dollars to replace.

"Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles," said Donna Lee, an elected member of the city council's Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board. "The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them.

"Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people.”

The revelation emerged as the community board published a tell-all booklet detailing frustrations of residents and businesses struggling to cope with the rampant sex trade on their doorstep. Part of the area Ms Lee represents is Hunter's Corner, which has become notorious as a meeting place for prostitutes and their customers.

Bernie Taylor, a local resident, said: "We had a parcel delivered to us recently and the address was 'Hooker's Corner' and it found its way to us with no problems whatsoever.” Locals turned out with placards to welcome publication of the community board's report, which calls on parliament in Wellington to give Auckland Council powers to ban sex workers from certain areas of the city. …

… New Zealand has some of the most liberal prostitution laws in the world after the sex trade was decriminalised by the previous Labour government in 2003.

It always seems to be the way whenever there is a real or perceived problem for people to seek solace in regulation. All they really need is stronger poles for their street signage. Or, maybe have some strong 'No pole dancing' signs.

Gary Johnson winning on issues

West Coast Rebel has drawn attention to a new electoral map of who would win the various states were voters fully informed and voted on the issues. Gary Johnson would win the Presidency hands down with 284 Electoral College votes based on a survey of (currently) 662,000 potential voters.

Image: What the electoral map would look like.

• Republican; red
• Democrat: blue
• Green: green
• Johnson: yellow
• Ron Paul; Orange

The site hosting the quiz is ISideWith.com which has a questionnaire and a state by state breakdown of results.


From Gary Johnson 2012:

The map is created off the results of over 600,000 quiz takers on the iSideWith site. Users answer 36 questions that cover a range of issues from social, environment, science, foreign policy, domestic policy, immigration, the economy, and healthcare. Their answers are matched up with the candidates answers and then they are shown who they align most closely with.

iSideWith generates state by state breakdowns so you can see which state supports which candidate. I tabulated the data and assigned the electoral votes to the winner of each state. iSideWith included a couple candidates in their questionnaire who will only be on the ballot in a handful of states so I excluded them, but I did include the Constitution, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, and Republican candidates.

The results:

Barack Obama, as the incumbent, wins a total of 217 electoral votes in 16 states. He wins the states you’d expect him to win - the west coast, north east and a few in the great lakes region.

Jill Stein (Green Party) beats out Obama in Vermont and Hawaii which are two of the most left leaning states and wins a total of 7 electoral votes.

Mitt Romney only wins 4 states - Utah, Alaska, South Dakota, and Alabama - and receives 21 votes.

Virgil Goode’s (Constitution Party) best showing was 3rd place in South Dakota, but generally placed in the back of the pack taking sixth in 43 states.

Ron Paul wins 3 states - Arizona, Wyoming, and North Dakota, but racked up the most second place finishes with 27. Paul received 17 electoral votes.

Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) claims the title of President by collecting enough electoral votes to put him in the White House with 284 votes (270 is the magic number to win the presidency) by winning 28 states.

This just begs the question, “Why the hell are we languishing on 5.3% in the odd poll that includes Johnson.”

PC hits the racetrack

Forget the expression Political Correctness gone mad, it was totally insane at birth and no degree of psychiatric help will ever get it back. Over the years we have witnessed a series of attacks on names. The iconic brand, Coon Cheese for example which was named after its creator, Edward Coon has had to fight off challenges for years.

Now a horse has had to have a name change on the basis of one complaint:

One of Australia's top trainers has been ordered to change the name of one of his young racehorses. Hall of Fame trainer David Hayes has been told two-year-old filly Blackman cannot keep her original name.

The filly, whose father is Excellent Art, was named after renowned Australian artist Charles Blackman. But the change was ordered by Racing Information Services Australia (RISA), which controls the registration and naming of racehorses, after it received one complaint.

"Certainly the name itself is a surname and certainly respected the connection back to the artist Charles Blackman after which it was named," RISA spokesman Myles Foreman said.

"But (RISA) also found that where the name is used without the known context back to a surname, it could be construed as being offensive which is where ultimately the complaint started.”

This action by RISA is only likely to exacerbate the situation whereby vexatious activists trawl through such things as names of horses, locations, products, and so on looking for something to be offended by. Pantywaisted, PC whipped wimps who kowtow to this sort of behavior only encourage more of the same, and in doing so take away our freedom of expression bit by bit.

Politicians are fond of proclaiming in defense of nanny state restrictions on our freedom, “If it only saves one life, it will have been worth it.” Now RISA is claiming that if it only saves one nut case from being offended the same applies.

Not long ago, a person offended by the name ‘Blackman’ would have and should have been regarded as neurotic. Now, such people seem to have the right not to be offended, something the sane neither have, nor ask for.

Ron Paul caught masquerading as Paul Ryan

Will this man stop at nothing to be one of Romney’s ‘young guns’?

Image: The evidence (Courtesy NewsBusters).

It is not surprising that Romney looks so damn smug here!

This can hardly be a mistake, could it? After all MSNBC is a ‘quality network’ unlike those ratbags over at Fox, which is only watched by bitter clingers out in flyover country, if what we're told is true which it must be. Lets face it, if you can't trust the mainstream media, ...?

Or, perhaps its a case of:

Twins: Only their mother could tell them apart!

There is of course the possibility that unbeknown to us, the strain of defending his budget has aged Ryan considerably and coincidently; he now appears a dead ringer for Ron.

On the other hand is it possible that Ryan has somehow managed to substitute Ron’s image for his own in the archives in order to boost his popularity with younger voters? That’s a subject best left to the conspiracy theorists.

The full story with video is at NewsBusters.

Raise a glass to concealed carry

The Blaze has a report on an elderly customer at an Internet café who foiled an attempted robbery by drawing his pistol and opening fire on the perpetrators, hitting both. The customer, Samuel Williams has a concealed carry license and took action when he became concerned that others could be injured.


The great thing in having concealed carry is that the sort of dropkicks who attempted the robbery can never be sure of whether they have a clear run or face a real risk of getting killed. Just the possibility of encountering the armed citizen is a great deterrent.

Obama redux; on owing it all to the state

The message from Obama to the business community about not really making it on their own and how they owe it all to the state has gone down like a lead balloon only faster.
It would be charitable to suggest that it was an aberration on his part or the currently popular ‘misspeak’ on his behalf, but given his record of belief that the state is the source of all that is good in society it is reasonable to think he really believes it.

Since covering it here a couple of days ago a number of other sites have dealt with it, and are worth a look.

For a little satire to highlight the absurdity of the statement; “You Didn’t Build That,” has a couple of pages of appropriate images in the vein of that on the left.

Clifford Thies, Professor of Economics at Shenandoah University says at Libertarian Republican:

If his recent speech in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama stated yet again, the neo-Marxist progressive philosophy. We who think we are successful owe everything to the government. Hence, the government can justly take from us what rightfully belongs to it and redistribute it as it pleases. This is called "giving back," because what we think we own, we actually got from the government in the first place.

Heresy is often the over-emphasis of part of the truth. The traditional Judeo-Christian faith tells us that we are both individuals and members of communities (including society, but also including other communities such as family, business associations, and charitable and fraternal organizations). Obama in spouting the neo-Marxist, progressive nostrum that we actually are NOT individuals, is a heretic and is to be condemned along with the anarchist who argues that we are ONLY individuals. …

Left Coast Rebel states:

Collectivist president claims nobody is successful on their own. True, in our world of specialization, nobody does everything alone. For example, Bill Gates in building Microsoft, had to buy pencils - Microsoft didn't invent and create their own pencils and pens, and office furniture. But to claim that the Pilot pen company had a hand in Windows development is a stretch. Did the workers at Microsoft contribute though?

Certainly. But they were paid for their work. The vision, the drive, the true energy was from the founder. …

Amy Page from the Heritage Foundation:

That sound you hear is silence—as millions of small business owners and entrepreneurs were left speechless this weekend from President Obama’s latest insult. The slap in the face to hard-working Americans conveyed Obama’s belief that it takes a village—a heavily subsidized village—to create that venture you’re profiting from. …

Newsmax has a roundup on the issue:

And Wayne Root has presented his views on the ‘help’ he has received:

… I think it’s now safe to say Obama has come out of the closet. Either he’s a Marxist hell bent on demonizing wealthy business owners and destroying capitalism, or perhaps he’s high on that drug he enjoyed so much in his youthful days. Because the reality is that government has hurt me, every step of the way. Government has NEVER helped me. But Obama is right about one thing- government is always by our side. Unfortunately it ruins everything it touches.

Here’s a synopsis of what government has done for me.

They’ve stolen my hard-earned money that I could have used to expand my business, or start new ones, or invest in stocks and real estate. Instead it went to government in the form of taxes, fees, licenses and workers comp. Don’t forget the rules, regulations and mandates that made it difficult or near impossible to start a business in the first place. Or the accountant and tax lawyer bills that could have been put to use creating jobs.

Or the IRS audits that stole valuable dollars and hours that I can never get back- even though every one of them ended up with me owing not a dime. But the damage was already done to an innocent man.

Or the millions my public company spent on complying with ridiculous bureaucratic boondoggles like Sarbanes Oxley- thereby wasting millions of dollars that could have instead created jobs and shareholder value for my investors. Don’t forget the bills passed by government that literally wiped out multiple businesses that I owned (multiple times).

Yes, Obama has a point. Government is always there by my side- stealing my money, robbing me blind, redistributing what I earned into the hands of people not willing to work as hard or as smart as me, distracting me with thousands of pages of regulations, limiting my options, wiping out jobs, and destroying shareholder value. …

Four Steps to Cheaper Electricity.

By Viv Forbes assisted by volunteer editors.

The Carbon Sense Coalition


We are told that the carbon tax will allow the market to determine how to best reduce the use of carbon fuels.

But we still have a thicket of bureaucratic rules, subsidies and mandates driving up the cost of electricity. This is not the market reacting to a simple tax.

If politicians were honest about reducing costs for Australian households and tax payers, four steps are required:

First, abolish all rules forcing electricity retailers to buy a mandated percentage of their power from expensive and unreliable sources such as wind and solar.

Second, abolish all rules forcing electricity retailers and consumers to pay above market prices for green energy, whether they want it or not.

Third, abolish the carbon tax and all the subsidies, compensation, exemptions and compliance costs associated with it. This money merry-go-round increases costs and taxes and achieves nothing useful.

Finally, boycott those shameless electricity retailers who have actively spread the green energy myths knowing that this will increase electricity prices while simultaneously requiring more gas back-up, thus benefitting their own gas interests.

The Heat in Indiana:

Some call this global warming; in Indiana we call this summer. - Marty Irwin

Solar Energy Dims 
and Wind Power Runs out of Puff

During 2012 over 5,000 German solar companies have gone broke, losing 25 billion euros and thousands of green energy jobs. As austerity hits the green subsidy industry, more will follow.

Wind energy is also totally dependent on subsidies and market sharing mandates for survival. Here in Australia it is said that the union super funds have $3 billion invested in Pacific Hydro, almost 10 per cent of their entire portfolio. Pacific Hydro would collapse if the MRET scheme was repealed. Maybe that explains the strident support for wind subsidies in some quarters.
See this: and this:

Obama; “If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that”

Cartoon: Baloo cartoons.

H/t Hot Air

Over here in Australia it is sometimes difficult to assess whether we have the silliest leader in the world, or whether our cousins Stateside have that dubious honor. The trouble is that just when you are starting to think there could not be anyone so out of touch and batshit crazy as Gillard, President Obama drops another of his pearls of wisdom.

It would be nice to think that if Gillard thinks the same as the following statement from the President, she would be smart enough to keep it to herself but that probably flatters her:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. …

So all these issues go back to that first campaign that I talked about, because everything has to do with how do we help middle-class families, working people, strivers, doers -- how do we help them succeed? How do we make sure that their hard work pays off? That’s what I've been thinking about the entire time I've been President.

So there you go again, thinking that all those sacrifices, hard work, long hours, saving and investing entitles you to consider that you have achieved something good if you succeed. According to the ideology of the administration, all you have achieved is to get a slice of the ‘cut and come again’ Magic Pudding. You probably had help carving it off and somebody else baked it (the government by the sound of it)

What’s more, it’s up to you to ‘give back’ (whatever that might mean) to maybe society or the collective or whatever.

It is clear from this statement that in the eyes of the President, his party, and those around him, individual initiative counts for little and the only reason people succeed, (not that there have been too many of those in the last three and a half years) is because of a collectivized society. Given the massive increase in red and green tape, rules and regulations as well as plain old state interference, anyone who succeeds these days, does so in spite of the government.

As for the question of helping people succeed, help the middle class, and ensuring their hard work pays off, it takes little thought. All he needs to do is stop confiscating their hard earned money to reward the Solyndra’s of the world and anyone with a good lobbyist and get the hell out of the way and watch it happen.

Taxing Termites, Wetlands, Volcanoes & Sacred Cows?

By Viv Forbes assisted by volunteer editors.

The Carbon Sense Coalition


Australia's tax on carbon dioxide now applies to big power stations, rubbish tips, steel works, cement plants, refineries and coal mines. But many of them have been given exemptions or compensation packages. Naturally they will pass all net costs onto consumers, but our government says that most voters will be compensated and will feel no pain. So it all looks like achieving a net nothing.

Carbon dioxide is produced whenever animal or vegetable matter is burnt, digested or rots. So when do we start taxing the big-time emitters such as termites? There are trillions of them quietly munching their way through timber, dead trees and grass. Then we have all the rice paddies, swamps and wetlands emitting that other dastardly natural gas, the Will-o-the-Wisp, methane. And who is going to chase India's 280 million sacred cows with gas collection bags?

Image: Termite Nests NT Australia.
Picture by Chris Gregory 1957

Mother Earth is also a huge "carbon polluter". Will we have a "Red Adair" putting caps on Earth's 1,500 active volcanoes? Or will BP be hired to drop blow-out protectors over the 139,000 sub-marine volcanoes?

Image: Chilean Volcano – No filters for ash, NOX or SOX here. 
And no Carbon Emission Permits.


Volcanoes and carbon dioxide:


It is obvious that the whole war on carbon is futile and will have no measurable effect on Earth's atmosphere or Australia's climate.

It's just a wealth redistribution and control caper.

The Measure of our Stupidity

"In 2011, the global carbon trading market climbed to a record US$176 billion – about the same as global wheat production".


This is surely an indicator of a western world gone mad. We invest more in ration cards for hot air than is invested in the world's most important staple food.

It must have felt like this in the latter days of Rome.

Johnson at 5%?; Claims Washington the real threat to freedom

Newsmax is reporting on a recent Zogby poll indicating that Governor Johnson is polling 5% of the vote and is making inroads into Romney’s support base. This is based on Romney’s support dropping by a couple of points when Johnson is in the mix. Polls though, seem to be telling all sorts of different stories at present.

Rasmussen has both major candidates running neck and neck at around the 45% mark. Interestingly, 5% prefer ‘some other candidate’ but this may not mean Johnson, some of these probably mean that they prefer anyone to Obama or Romney.

Meanwhile Gov. Johnson has released a major statement on threats to freedom, declaring that the real threat is from Washington, not overseas:

Image: Day by Day

Speaking Saturday at the annual Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson charged that the greatest threats to freedom in the U.S. today are not foreign aggressors, but the federal government itself.

Johnson said, “We have reached a sad point in history at which Americans’ freedom is not being threatened from outside, but rather from our own government and the politicians who run it. Yes, there are many around the world, whether they be terrorists or nations who harbor them, who would do us harm if given the opportunity, and who would love to rob us of our liberties. But with a national defense that represents almost half the entire world’s military spending, we are well-equipped to deal with those external threats.

“What we are failing to deal with is the fact that Congress and the past several Presidents have systematically done to freedom a nd liberty what no foreign enemy could do. If another nation robbed us of hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth, it would be an outrage we would not tolerate. Yet, we have watched helplessly as the politicians and the Federal Reserve have done precisely the same thing by racking up trillions in debt, devaluing our currency with wrong-headed monetary policies, and placed our dollars on the verge of collapse.

“If a foreign aggressor threatened to take away our rights to privacy, due process under the Constitution, or the fundamental liberties granted in the Bill of Rights, it would be an act of war. Yet, we need the government’s permission and must endure its probing to board an airplane, we can be stopped and frisked for simply walking down the street in New York, and we have government drones flying over farms in the Midwest to make sure manure is being disposed of legally.

“We can be detained indefinitely by our own government under the guise of protecting us. Our cell phones and Internet can be monitored. And even our reading habits can be examined at our public libraries.

“If Iran actually acted to do those things to us, we would be launching missiles in an instant. But, in reality, Iran nor any other foreign aggressor has done anything to us – and probably can’t – to rival the loss of freedom and rights we are suffering at the hands of Washington, D.C.

“To a former Republican, the sad irony of these realities is that it is impossible to lay the blame for the destruction of our liberties on one of the two major parties more than the other. They are equally guilty, and equally willing to continue to spend, tax and legislate freedom into oblivion.”

The Last Word – the Consensus is Destroyed

By Viv Forbes assisted by

volunteer editors.

The Carbon Sense Coalition


The TV news on Carbon Tax Sunday (1 July 2012) illustrated our successful destruction of "The Consensus". The reports I saw all showed snaps of the "Axe the Tax" Rallies, and even the ABC showed a glimpse of a protest rally and described the new carbon tax legislation as "controversial".

Protest News:

A poll taken in Australia on Carbon Sunday showed 64% against the tax and only 33% for despite the flood of bribes, scare stories and propaganda spread like confetti from government spruikers.

We are now in good company. More than 1000 international scientists feel strongly enough to put their names on a list of consensus deniers:

Compare this to the so called IPCC Consensus:

Few people still believe the global warming story, but they will still support the carbon tax for two reasons:

First, they hope and believe they will get more compensation than they will lose in extra costs.

And second, they still feel guilty and want to do something to "save the polar bears" and "reduce pollution" (as long as it does not cost too much).

Tony Abbot has done a great job to draw attention to the "Great Big New Tax", but has a big credibility problem for two reasons – exaggeration about the effects that will be seen immediately, and a policy that in fact supports the global warming story and just wants to combat it a different way. Most Liberals are just a lighter shade of green. The Liberal policy of direct action is just another way to waste our substance on a greedy green industry.

Much of the damage of the carbon tax will not be seen – who can point to the airbus that was NOT bought, the railway line NOT built or the processing plant built in China instead of in Bendigo. The biggest long term damage will NOT be seen. Our children will be worse off but no one will ever know why.

Finally, in case "Carbon Pollution" fails to deliver us, in chains, to the UN bureaucracy, they have two new weapons being test fired – "Sustainability", and "Bio-Diversity".

Imagine governments who preside over of whole empires of sick nationalised subsidised industries trying to lecture tax payers on "Sustainability".

"Peak Oil" has proved a fizzer once again, despite all the efforts of people like Obama and his energy Czar to stop oil drilling and construction of pipelines, but "Overpopulation" is due for a new run.

Every decent war is accompanied by censorship, and the war on carbon is no different. If they had their way, Climate Commissioner Flannery, Government Guru Garnaut and their CSIRO lap-dog would determine who may, and may not, say what in the Great Climate Debate. And "Carbon Sense" may be required to provide space for alternative comments by the alarmist camp.

See: "The forbidden history of unpopular people". Quirky title but a great video presentation:

Crazy government websites

Image: Baloo cartoons.

Last week in the IPA’s ‘Hey… What did I miss’ page, some attention was given to the plethora of Australian government websites around:

Today we learned the Prime Minister spent $53,000 to run a couple of blogs. I wish that was the worst of it. Here’s just some of the other 900+ websites taxpayers fund:

• ‘A Healthy and Active Australia’ (apparently we need a government website to know it’s good to be healthy and active)
• ‘Alcohol.gov.au’ (sadly not an online liquor store)
• ‘Artbank’ (yes, the Australian government buys art and rents it commercially!)
• ‘Fashion Rules’ (unfortunately not a bureaucrats’ guide to fashion – that would at least be funny)
• ‘Rainfall Reliability Wizard’ (presumably not managed by Tim Flannery)
• And my favourite: ‘Australian National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ (don’t ask me what it’s for, I have no idea)

In the current issue another site, even more nonsensical has been discovered. It is the tellmesomethingidontknow.gov.au site (seriously, you just can’t make this stuff up)

In it you will find lots of interesting snippets like, how many people want human rights training for others (81%), old people live in their own homes alone by choice, there are enough disabled people to populate Adelaide, some famous people are descended from refugees, and to cap it all off, some animals are homosexual. You were all just busting to hear that, weren’t you?

The most innovative part is the sharing section, carrying the label, “Tell someone who cares.” It is not known what genius thought of this one but whoever it was must really out of touch with the idiom out there.

“Tell someone who cares,” is the expression used in polite society in place of the more robust saying, “I don’t give a f…,” something that is well understood. It is like the conversation:

Steve: You could do something to help, Charlie.
Charlie: Why?
Steve: Well, it would get me out of trouble.
Charlie: I suppose I could give you 20 cents Steve.
Steve: What the hell is the use of 20 cents?
Charlie: You could use it to ring someone who cares.

You get the picture.

Abuse of new consorting laws

(L) The target, (R) The catch. (ABC)

When consorting and anti association laws were proposed in various states as a kneejerk reaction to biker violence, they were opposed by the LDP, civil libertarians, and others as excessive, broad targeted, and likely to lead to abuse of process. These laws are not targeted at criminal acts, rather at associating with undesirables, which has been turned into a criminal offense.

Normally under criminal law in civilized countries and free societies, due process has to be observed in convicting anyone of a crime. This involves providing irrefutable proof that a crime had been committed by the accused, or at least had been planned and preparations were underway.

The aim of 'consorting' laws has been to remove the burden of proof from prosecutions of even plausible evidence of criminal activity. Associating with others is evidence enough to secure conviction. It represents the lazy man’s guide to law enforcement.

It is no surprise that the first conviction has nothing to do with bikers or organized crime, but targets a young guy with a history of minor offences behind him:

A 21-YEAR-OLD man has been jailed for a year after "consorting" with his housemate, in the first conviction under controversial new laws in NSW. Charlie Maxwell Foster pleaded guilty to the new offence of "habitually consort with convicted offenders" at Inverell Local Court last week, and will now serve nine months of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.

The offence of consorting, first used to break up criminal gangs in the 1920s, fell into disuse after criticism that police abused it to target individuals. Reintroduced in April, explicitly to target bikie and organised crime gangs, it makes it a crime to communicate with criminals, either in person, by telephone or email.

Speaking in court, Mr Foster's solicitor Jon Watts said, "on two occasions ... the person he was in company with, they were actually living in the same house and they were going shopping, grocery shopping at the time.” There was no suggestion Mr Foster was consorting in order to plan any illegal activity, the court was told. …

… Speaking outside the court, Justin Dowd, president of the NSW Law Society, criticised the new consorting laws. "It's one that not only civil libertarians but anyone with a concern for the rule of law would be worried about," he said.

Is there no irony in the statement above, “fell into disuse after criticism that police abused it to target individuals?” A young man is spending at least nine months in the slammer, not for a criminal act, nor for intent to carry one out, but because he associated with someone. Targeting criminal activity is a legitimate activity of law enforcement authorities; targeting groups over the possibility that they may contain some criminal elements is not.

The 7:30 Report has more here, but is the reporter ‘consorting’?

The United Motorcycle Council details some of the problems with the legislation here.

Johnson to end the IRS

On his website Gov Johnson states that the U.S. Tax system imposes an enormous toll on productivity through high marginal rates, absurd complexity, loopholes for the well-connected, and incentives for wasteful decisions. He offers a better and fairer system including:

• Abolishing the Internal Revenue Service.
• Enacting the Fair Tax to tax expenditures, rather than income, with a 'prebate' to make spending on basic necessities tax free.
• With the Fair Tax, eliminate business taxes, withholding and other levies that penalize productivity, while creating millions of jobs.

Fair tax here.

Here is his latest video:

War on Poverty; Hebrews 13:8

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever"

In the John Singleton, Bob Howard book “Rip Van Australia” written back in 1977, the following point was made about Aboriginal welfare spending:

… Total outlays on Aboriginal affairs rose nearly threefold in two years of Labor government. The department of Aboriginal Affairs doubled to 1450 staff, but actual payments to Aboriginals increased relatively modestly from $5 million to $9 million, to a level of $80 per Aborigine, or about $400 per family. But if the whole of the budget for Aboriginal Affairs ($160 million) had been simply paid to Aborigines, they would have got $1500 each, man, woman, and child.

The average Aboriginal family would have been above the average white family’s earnings in Australia without any of them having to lift a finger. The fact that Aborigines are not the richest people in Australia is a measure of the extent to which the money supposedly spent on their behalf is drawn off into administration, research and services.

Let's step forward to America in the present.

In the current “Liberator Online” James W Harris quotes a recent Cato Institute policy analysis by Michael Tanner, which states that with the expenditure of almost a trillion dollars per year on fighting poverty, little has been accomplished in around fifty years since the War on Poverty was officially declared:

• Total welfare spending in constant 2011 dollars (including state and local funds) has risen from $256 billion in 1965 to $908 billion today. Yet the poverty rate remains very close to 1964, when it was 19 percent and falling rapidly. It never fell below 10.5 percent, and this year, it is expected to be roughly 15.1 percent -- and climbing.

• In 2011, there were 126 different federal antipoverty programs administered by seven different cabinet agencies and six independent agencies.

• Federal, state and local governments spend fully $20,610 for every poor person in America -- $61,830 per poor family of three. The poverty line for a family of three is $18,530. So, in theory, poverty -- as defined by the government's own figures -- should have been wiped out many times over.

• It gets worse: Over the next 10 years, federal and state governments are projected to spend $250,000 for every American currently living in poverty. That, of course, is enough to make each impoverished family of four… millionaires.

"Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient," Tanner concludes. "Our current $1 trillion War on Poverty is a failure.”

Sending out cheques to all of the poor people in the US would be an absurd proposition and would cost a fortune to administer even if it were attempted in the future. The current effort is not only absurd, it is also counterproductive.

Were the 908 billion dollars left in the public’s pockets or not borrowed against future generations, thus assuring their poverty, the result would be a massive boost to the economy of the United States with investment and the job market taking off. The result would not end poverty, but would be the most effective method of reducing it as close as possible to zero.

In government; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Allen West; the impact of Atlas Shrugged

Allen West has always come across as a very articulate, knowledgeable, and determined man, able to back his opinions with clear and concise logic. He has though, come across as a conservative, although not one of the dark side establishment RINOs willing to hock his soul for a taste of power.

In the following video, he discusses the impact of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged on his philosophy and political views. This explains his small government individualist sentiment. H/t Townhall:

Gillard is honest?

"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton (master of semantics)

Cartoon: By Pickering.

Paul Syvret seems to be echoing Bill in his argument that Julia Gillard did not lie when she said, “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.” His argument seems to be based around changed circumstances necessitating a breach of a promise to the electorate:

Ultimately the price of winning government with the support of the Greens and Independents was a price on carbon. Gillard, ever the pragmatist, changed her mind and broke a promise. The circumstances had changed, or as Tony Abbott himself has been heard to note, "s--- happens".

There is a gulf of difference between a broken promise in the context of altered circumstance, and a deliberate decision to mislead. As such, to accuse Gillard of lying, to argue that the carbon pricing scheme is based on a deliberate, pre-meditated lie, in itself displays some towering mendacity.

That it has persisted for so long and spawned the meme "Ju-liar" (a term used only by the ignorant, boorish and spiteful) says more about Abbott's guile and ability to manipulate the facts for his own destructive ends than it does our Prime Minister's trustworthiness.

You've heard all the lines, ad nauseam no doubt - "this toxic tax based on a lie" - all of it in itself is a falsehood, made even more brazen, given Abbott's self-declared "weather-vane" stance on the issue.

Regardless of the semantics involved in her ‘refusal to rule out’ an Emissions Trading Scheme, the sound bite used to front the 2010 election was, “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.” It was pitched to an electorate already growing nervous of the impact of a big new tax on Australian industry in a time of economic uncertainty.

The fact was that a promise had been made to the Australian people and regardless of the need for the support of the Greens, which was a solid undertaking and should have been carried out. After promising no carbon tax, negotiating on creating was not an option. To immediately turn around and enact one is in fact blatant dishonesty; it should have been off limits.

The idea that it had to be done to secure Green support is clearly a lie. The idea that the Greens would support anyone other than Labor is ridiculous.

Arguments that Tony Abbott has been less than straightforward with the electorate excuses Gillard are a contrivance. The fact that one side is dishonest does not excuse the other side’s culpability for similar behavior.