Malcolm Turnbull: Couldn’t find his arse with three grabs.

The Australian government is going to blow another $42 billion on buildings and jobs to try to ward off the effects of the global economic crisis. This move is described by the ‘Wall St Journal as an “electorally friendly strategy designed to shore up employment in the short term,” in other words it helps the government.

 After Rudd gave away billions in ‘Stimulous checks a few weeks ago, without much effect other than to please a few chain stores he is at it again, this time giving $12.7 billion for immediate one-off payments to most people he thinks will vote for him if he pays them enough.

Taxpayers will fork out $3.7 billion to insulate homes for free, so those who have done it and paid for it themselves will be kicking themselves. Serves you right you dumb bastards, aren’t you smart enough to know that in the modern nanny state the government does that for you?

Interestingly the government will spend $6.6 billion to build 20,000 new ‘social’ housing dwellings, and fund maintenance to around 2500 vacant ‘social’ houses. Please St Kevin; Homes for the homeless ……. Is it just me or is there something odd in the idea that with 2,500 empty ones, we need to build another 20,000 of them?

Kev is assuring us that there is no guarantee that it will work, but if it doesn’t he will do more of this.

Meanwhile according to the SMH, the National Party has woken up to the fact that Barnaby Joyce is a member of their party and has been acting as an opposition and have decided to try it themselves and see how they get on.

The next generation will have to foot the bill for the Rudd government's spending spree, The Nationals say.

Nationals leader Warren Truss attacked Labor over its $42 billion stimulus package.

Along with the massive spending package, the government announced on Tuesday it expects the budget to sink into a $22.5 billion deficit in the 2008-09 financial year, a massive deterioration from the $5.4 billion surplus projected in November.

"It's a spending spree which will all have to be paid for by the next generation ... by our children and our grandchildren," Mr Truss told parliament.

"I can say one thing to you with absolute confidence: this deficit will last beyond this government."

Mr Truss said the package was the biggest spend now, pay later program that Australia had seen.

"Today's cash stimulus is tomorrow's cash drought," he said.

Malcolm Turnbull, the “opposition leader” has not yet decided whether actually opposing the government is a good idea at this point. To be fair, if he were to do so it has been pointed out that Kevin Rudd might criticize him for it.

Speaking in parliament less than three hours after the details were made public, Mr Turnbull said the coalition wasn't against economic stimulus but wanted to ensure taxpayer funds were used to the best effect.

"We are not opposed to a proactive and creative approach but we have to use the taxpayers' money wisely," he said.

"We must not overlook the enormity of what we are seeing today. We are seeing a budget that is going over the course of nine months from a $22 billion surplus to a $22 billion deficit.

"We are going to see an additional $111 billion to our national debt as a result of these measures."

Mal is of course not very bright, and is still trying to find a hole in Kevvys assertion that the current economic crisis is the result of 30 years or unrestricted, unregulated, uncontrolled, and anarchistic, laissez-faire free market capitalism and there is a real need for some good old hard core socialism. (Kev was referred to in the last election as a "fiscal conservative" by.... um, er.... Oh thats right, by Kevin Rudd.)

Of course for a guy who hasn’t a clue you have to admit Mal has done very well, just not in government where he seems to be unable to find his arse with three grabs. The Liberals have to seriously consider getting Costello to take the leadership.

A diversion into footy.

I was putting some stuff together then CB contacted me with a query about Russell Crowe and the South Sydney Football team, and I decided to pick up a couple of videos of the two popular codes here for some of my overseas readers.

The first is our own AFL, a fast paced running and kicking game. This is about the best I could find, although the quality of the video is not too hot.



Rugby League is our other footy, although there is some Rugby union, but that’s not all that much of a game. Some call soccer football, but as they use a round ball nobody really takes them seriously. The highest any League player can aspire to is the State of Origin team of Queensland, or New South Wales which is sometimes nearly as good. There is a national team selected from these, but they lack serious opposition which makes State of Origin the best.

Obama Stimulates Corruption.

h/T Libertatian Republican.

Some of the lefties who were so certain that Obama was one of them have been shocked at DEA raids on medical Marijuana suppliers in California. People carrying out legal activities in that state are finding themselves under arrest: -

From a libertarian perspective this is a double-whammy: Through this action, Obama has signaled that his administration would not be a friend of legalization, even for medicinal use, but worse, that he has little if any respect for the concept of States' Rights. It calls into question, what will his DEA be doing in the other 10 states in the Nation that have also decriminalized medicinal marijuana, most recently in the 2008 election, Michigan and Massachusetts, by overwhelming majorities.

We libertarians, especially libertarian Republicans, have been screaming at the cultural left for months now that Obama was no friend of civil liberties. Outside of abortion rights, and gay rights, Obama is a cultural authoritarian, most especially on issues such as seat belt laws, 55 mph speed limit, gambling, free speech rights, affirmative action quotas, gun ownership and smoking bans. Why should any civil liberties advocate expect anything different from him on marijuana reform?

Rather amusingly some of them are blaming Bush.

I have just been reading some stuff on the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, which Bush proposed to eliminate because it proved to be an ineffective and inefficient use of resources.

The Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year to local and state crime prevention initiatives. ….

A 2002 report by the ACLU of Texas identified seventeen scandals involving Byrne-funded anti-drug task forces in Texas, including cases of falsifying government records, witness tampering, fabricating evidence, false imprisonment, stealing drugs from evidence lockers, selling drugs to children, large-scale racial profiling, sexual harassment, and other abuses of official capacity. Recent scandals in other states include the misuse of millions of dollars in federal grant money in Kentucky and Massachusetts, false convictions based on police perjury in Missouri, and making deals with drug offenders to drop or lower their charges in exchange for money or vehicles in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Well we are in for hope and change, right? If it as a government program was so bad that Bush was prepared to scrap it, then Obama would surely get rid of it, wouldn't he? It seems that according to Ron Paul the opposite is the case.

At least $4 billion is allocated to expanding the police state and the war on drugs through Byrne grants, which even the Bush administration opposed, and the COPS program, both of which are corrupt and largely ineffective programs.

They are rewarding them with massive increases in funding to do more of it. Failed government programs always tend to get more money, otherwise it would be an admission of failure and the state will never accept that.

Or is it just that the activities mentioned in the third paragraph are the sort of conduct a Chicago Democrat can empathize with?

Bizarre Bigger, Better, Bailout Bleating By Bligh.

ABC photo: Anna Bligh, calls for a “coordinated spending plan.”

Anna Bligh has to be committing one of the greatest acts of political cynicism that has been foisted on the Queensland and Australian taxpayers in a very long time. In the recent round of economic talks with Rudd she has claimed that what we need is a “coordinated spending plan” which she claims is vital.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has urged the Federal Government to accelerate plans to stimulate the economy.

Ms Bligh held talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Canberra today to discuss ways to protect jobs amid speculation the Federal Government is preparing another economic stimulus package.

Ms Bligh says a coordinated spending plan is vital.

"Now is the time for governments at all levels to put our foot on the pedal and be doing everything we can to invest in the economy, whether it's in services or infrastructure and job creating programs," she said.

"It is public investment at times like this that is going to ensure that we see it through.

"Our own data shows us that we are seeing a deterioration of the Queensland economy and it's happened very rapidly.

"What we need to see is state governments responding very very forcefully and the Commonwealth continuing the sort of activity that they've put in place over the last few months."

The problem we have with this is that one of the reasons for the “deterioration of the Queensland economy” that she professes concern about is that last August Anna canned the McFarlane Oil shale project at Proserpine. Onya Anna, the marginal seat of Whitsunday will be kept in Labor hands at the expense of the Australian taxpayer.

The immediate result was the loss of the jobs of 500 people engaged on the project. It also wiped out $300 million already invested in the project. The project was worth $15 Billion, with the potential for $400 million annually in royalties alone and would have created 3,000 direct jobs as permanent as jobs can be.

It would have produced 30 million barrels per year of low sulphur diesel and aviation gas and could have lowered Australia’s fuel import deficit to the tune of $10 billion per year.

Queensland’s reputation had already taken a beating from the prohibition on the mining and export of uranium and the oil shale decision meant that the Queensland government had effectively halted the development of two globally significant energy fuels in 15 months for the sake playing politics.

It has to be incredible hypocrisy for a state government, which has blocked thousands of jobs worth of development projects, to then go to Canberra with its hand out for massive funding for infrastructure projects to create jobs that it prevented us from having in the first place not to mention the economic cost both to the state and the nation as a whole caused by these idiotic feel good at the time decisions.

Australian Young (L)liberals plagiarize Obama.

H/T Thoughts on Freedom.

An item in “The Australian.”

THE Young Liberals are proposing nine months of compulsory national service for all young Australians, to be completed before age 24.
The service would not be restricted to the military but include community and foreign service and trades.

Under the plan, young Australians could do their service overseas, working in foreign aid and development, either in programs run by the Australian government or helping non-government bodies such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Frontiers. 



The domestic option would enable people to serve in hospitals, old age homes and other community organisations. 



Participants could also have the option of working and studying in various trades including plumbing and electrical. 



Young Liberal president Noel McCoy said the aim was to provide a sizeable low-cost workforce that would help to offset the effects of the financial crisis. 

At the same time he said it would help instil a work ethic and sense of national pride in young people. …

Mr McCoy said under the proposal students would not be able to graduate from university without a certificate of completion of national service.

This has been proposed before, I wondered for a minute how the young Liberals managed to come up with a new idea all by themselves, until I remembered this.

Barack Obama's national-service plan purports to be voluntary, yet nonparticipating schools would lose funding, and uncooperative individuals would be denied tax credits. …..

Obama advocates expanding AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000, and establishing a "Classroom Corps," a "Health Corps," a "Clean Energy Corps," and a "Homeland Security Corps." Obama also wants to expand national service beyond our nation's border by doubling the Peace Corps, and creating "America's Voice Initiative" to send Americans fluent in other languages overseas as part of a new public diplomacy outreach.



Obama has set the goal of 50 hours per year for high-school students and 100 hours per year for college students. He claims he is not going to directly compel young people in high school to serve 50 hours per year, but instead would simply withhold educational funding from schools if they fail to comply with his programs. ….

At the college level, Obama says he will "require 100 hours of service" per year by creating a new "American Opportunity Tax Credit" that will reduce education costs by $4,000. So instead of it being mandatory, one could opt out by simply paying $4,000 more than the person who doesn't opt out. That is a high price to pay for something that is allegedly optional.
…..

The Liberal Party has lost its way, the senior party elements think they can get back into power by outRudding Rudd, and the young ones have always been babes in the woods.

Update: The motion lapsed for want of a mover and was only supported by the outgoing president. Hopefully this will be the last that is heard of him.

Government and why it doesn't work.

Cartoon by Nicholson. Click to enlarge.

I am not sure which is worse, politicians or those who believe in them.

Chris Berg at IPA has come up with a great article “Go on, mate, get out there and make a difference.” In it he refers to the resignation of Labor MP Evan Thornley in order to reenter the private sector when he was on the verge of a ministerial position.

But if the only reason state Labor MP Evan Thornley has resigned his seat is so he can re-enter the private sector, then, well, that's fantastic. In 2009, we're going to want every businessperson on the ground working overtime to create jobs. The last thing we need is talented entrepreneurs spending their lives stuck in the world of petty rivalries and disproportionate egos that is Australian politics.

Anyway, we have a more than sufficient number of politicians trying to engineer political solutions to what is an economic crisis. Thornley founded a company that, at its height, was worth just shy of $1billion. His commercial acumen and skills could be far more useful building the economy than regulating it. …

So it is no surprise that so many laws and government programs are ill defined, have no clear goal, and provide no method of assessing whether they are actually working. But politicians find it's a lot easier to start a government program than to close an old one. Bureaucracies, commissions, departments, boards, committees and taskforces pile up upon each other, each insisting on a slice of the annual budget. They say that laws are like sausages: it's better not to see them being made. But do we really have to be forced to eat so many? …

In another post he linked to an article in “The Australian,” containing the following: -

... because one of our biggest problems is recruiting good people into politics," (Liberal MP) Dr Washer said. Without proper pay, there was a risk only "clowns", "losers", "screwballs" and "halfwits" would want to enter politics. "We need highly professional, highly skilled people to run the economy," he said. "If you're going to squeeze their pay you can't get them."

This raises the question of just what sort of people are we getting in parliament, are they, “highly professional, highly skilled people,” or are they, “clowns, losers, screwballs and halfwits." OK, OK, lets be fair and at least analyze the sort of person who is there. Obviously not all of them fall into the second category, "clowns, etc. but considering the nature of politics, the highly skilled professional type is unlikely to be drawn to it.

Thomas Jefferson had an interesting take on them: -

"The nest of office being too small for all of them to cuddle into at once, the contest is eternal, which shall crowd the other out. For this purpose, they are divided into two parties, the Ins and the Outs, so equal in weight that a small matter turns the balance. To keep themselves in, when they are in, every stratagem must be practiced, every artifice used which may flatter the pride, the passions or power of the nation. Justice, honor, faith, must yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place. The question whether a measure is moral, is never asked; but whether it will nourish the avarice of their merchants, or the piratical spirit of their navy, or produce any other effect which may strengthen them in their places. ...”

Oh well, as they say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Jefferson obviously displayed much of the same contempt for politicians, or in this case political parties in 1810 that we express today and for the same reasons.

Politicians are by choice people who hold onto office at the whim of popular opinion and for that reason have to play to the majority of the public in order to keep office. In reality parties hold the loyalty of certain groups on ideological grounds who seldom consist 50+% in their own right, so the order of the day is to appeal to sufficient others to get to the magical figure.

In order to keep that loyalty of consistent followers they need to talk the sort of talk that keeps them in thrall, which is not generally difficult, as they had to be good at it to get there in the first place. The trick with the rest is to play the game of giving them the old something for nothing, or at least sounding like it. This practice does not appeal to people of conscience or principle.

The problem is and has always been that the sort of people who would be best suited to conducting affairs of the nation seldom want to be there and are not well equipped to get there anyway. The sort of people best equipped are those who crave power, many such as John Howard have played the game since their late teens, I mean what sort of teenager wants to spend time doing political committee work rather than chase chicks? Basically, to have the drive for politics you have to believe that the use of the authority vested in it is personally fulfilling.

In other words it appeals to those who get a kick out of power; who like running the show, with the attention and kudos that goes with it. Some on the other hand are just plain dumb enough to believe they are giving genuine public service, and that their superior ideas are best for all of us and therefore perform a noble function. Parliament is therefore not the sort of place where we should expect to find people of self-respect and integrity.

There are undoubtedly people in our parliaments who do consider themselves honest, moral and intelligent, and some of them may in fact be so. Those that are so are a small minority, the rest are deluding themselves.

Climate change legislation wound back.

Cartoon; how Barnaby Joyce must feel.

The current economic crisis seems to be putting climate change on the back burner.

Dr Muriel Newman in an article called “Getting our house in order” made the following point: -

In light of the worsening state of world economies, USA President-elect Barak Obama is reported to be planning to delay many of the pledges he made during the election campaign so that he is not distracted and can focus on reversing the economic slide. Action on climate change is said to be one of the projects that he is expected to sideline.

This seems to be an ongoing theme at present with much of Europe backing away from the idea as well as India, China, and so on refusing to take part in the first place. Recently Vaclav Smil, the prolific environmental thinker at the University of Manitoba – he's written 25 books was asked by NYT about Barack Obama's chances of ending American dependence on imported oil.

The only way that Mr. Obama could significantly advance this objective, he said, would be with the help “of a deep and lasting recession.” Otherwise, he said, “there will be precious little of any rapid change.” As for Mr. Obama's promise to enact a cap-and-trade regime to discourage the use of fossil fuels, “it will only further cripple America's industries.”

“Energy transitions take decades to accomplish. Anyone who expects Mr. Obama to transform the world will be disappointed [and] the degree of disappointment that must follow such naiveté will be phenomenal.”

There is also a recurrent theme in that the climate change frantics are becoming desperate at the growing skepticism of their voodoo cult among a growing band of respected scientists, as reported recently: -

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change. ……

Why is this happening in Ball’s view:

“Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened,” said the professor.

“I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal.”

Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, …. Recently claimed: “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges. ….

Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University, agreed. He said: “The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do.” …..

Here in Oz the government is determined to continue with its draconian carbon emissions trading scheme, which although watered down somewhat from its original proposals will cripple industry even without our current economic woes. Here again there is deliberate deceit and hysteria being used.

In a recent interview on ABC the opposition, Barnaby Joyce, (the Liberals are intimidated by Rudd and back down on every principle they have ever held) was asked: "Your comments of course will lead some to brand you as a climate change denier. What do you make of those accusations?"

Senator Joyce replied: "Well, I find the whole term repugnant. Climate change denier, like holocaust denier, you know, this is the sort of emotive language that has become stitched up in this ETS issue. A climate change denier? One is not allowed to question anymore and one is not allowed to call to question? One has to sort of fall into sort of a lock step goose step and parade around the office, you know, ranting and raving that we are all as one."

The government has accused him of comparing environmentalists with Nazis, which is a deliberate falsehood. The government themselves injected the word Nazi into the argument. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of history is aware that it was not the Nazis who came up with legislation to make Holocaust denial an offence.

Senator Joyce would be wrong to call them Nazis, McCarthyists would be reasonable.