Hannan endorses Gary Johnson.

Image: Daniel Hannan, courtesy The Telegraph.

It is not unusual for a Presidential candidate to get overseas endorsements. Last election, apart from the usual raft of home grown endorsers for the Democratic candidate, - Tony Rezko, Reverend Wright, Billy Boom Boom Ayers, and so on there were also foreign leaders such as Castro and Gadaffi.

Gary Johnson has achieved the endorsement of British MEP Daniel Hannan, who calls him the most libertarian candidate ever to seek the US Presidency. Hannan is celebrated in libertarian circles worldwide, gaining rock star status for his “Devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government,” speech.

Referring to Johnson as incorruptible who is surely the most anti-government candidate ever to have sought the GOP presidential nomination, he goes on to list his achievements, including two terms as New Mexico Governor:

Gary Johnson’s philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget – not 20 years from now, but immediately – and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.

Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the “war on drugs” as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states’ rights and the US Constitution.

The Rest is here.

Sunset for the C-Tax?

By; Viv Forbes, Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition

Credit: This cartoon first appeared at www.carbon-sense.com

If the Green/Labor Coalition manages to force their carbon dioxide tax upon us, we must insist that it has a Sunset Clause, which is triggered by global cooling.

Natural climate change is the way of the world, and warm periods and cold periods will inevitably keep coming. When the next cold period makes fools of the global warming alarmists, Australia should not be saddled forever with the world's biggest tax and trading scam based on hot air. (And in the cold, our struggling plants will need every bit of carbon dioxide plant food in the atmosphere.)

This whole tax extravaganza has nothing to do with "carbon" or "pollution". It is based on the foolish theory that man's production of life-sustaining carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming and we need a C-Tax to stop it.

However no one has produced evidence that carbon dioxide has caused any significant warming. What's more, carbon dioxide production is rising strongly but world temperature has been stable for the last 13 years. Right now sea surface temperatures are falling sharply.

"Climate" is generally defined as an average of 30 years of weather. Therefore the C-Tax should be scrapped immediately if the global temperature falls below the 30 year average temperature, indicating the start of global cooling.

As the sun has gone quiet, and Queensland has just had its coldest autumn for at least 60 years, this looks likely to happen soon.

For more info on global temperatures (no warming for 13 years) and falling sea surface temperatures see:

To see how the global temperature in May 2011 is the same as it was 30 years ago, in 1981.

And new evidence from NASA satellite data shows that climate models are wildly in error.

Queensland autumn 2011 the coldest for at least 60 years:

The ominously quiet sun:

German Energy Fantasyland

Since the days of the Nazis, a green canker has been growing in the body of German politics. And before most other places in the world, Green coalitions have governed Germany, producing an energy Fantasyland.

The Green stupidities on energy policy are going to bear bitter fruit for German consumers and businesses in the near future.

Naturally the German Greens hate coal, and nationalization destroyed their coal industry anyway. But at least they had nuclear power and Russian gas.

But Greens hate nuclear power also, so they rejoiced mightily when the Japanese tsunami caused problems in a Japanese nuclear power station. Tens of thousands were killed by the tsunami. To date none have been reported as killed by the crippled nuclear station, but the Greens have launched a worldwide fear campaign, which allowed the German Greens to close several nuclear stations and agree to close the rest.

All other Europeans have a domestic source of cheap reliable electricity – for example, coal in Poland, gas in Russia, nuclear in France, hydro in Scandinavia and geothermal in Iceland. Even UK, now fearful of its foolish adventure with wind, has embarked on a crash nuclear program. Denied all of these sensible energy sources, Germany is headed for blackouts in the first severe winter.

German engineers are as good as any in the world, and their Power Network Agency warned recently that Germany faced power shortages NEXT WINTER, unless more reserve power generation capacity was available.

A tiny ray of reality has penetrated Fantasyland and two very un-green decisions were recommended:
· One mothballed nuclear plant should be restarted.
· Subsidies should be offered for a crash program to construct new coal and gas power stations.

If the Green fools now controlling Australia manage to close Yallourn and Hazelwood coal fired power stations, we have no feasible nuclear, hydro or geothermal capacity. All we have to keep the lights on will be a crash program to construct gas fired power. Even this effort will be hampered and made much more costly if we insist that each gas plant is forced to carry and mollycoddle a few wind toys as well.

Soon Germany will NOT have the most stupid energy policy in the world. Source:

Reported in CCNet 15/7/2011.

RLC; Debt Ceiling Deal a Shameful Fraud

Cartoon: By Ramirez.

The Republican Liberty Caucus has released the following statement on the agreement to raise the debt ceiling:

Trading Massive New Debt for Unenforceable Promises of Future Cuts is Grossly Irresponsible

The plan to raise the debt ceiling agreed on by the House this weekend is a total fraud, a vessel of broken promises, and a gross evasion of congressional responsibility to spend within its means, according to the Republican Liberty Caucus, a national organization of activists with official affiliates in 42 states. The Caucus Board of Directors blasted the latest deal as an insult to the basic American principles of individual liberty, limited government and private enterprise.

"The details will probably be secret until after the law is signed by the President," says RLC Director Bill Westmiller of California, "but it is certain that it will authorize enough additional debt to pay the costs of last year's bailout, the Democrat's stimulus, all the expenses of ObamaCare, and the continuation of extravagant federal programs implemented by both Republicans and Democrats over the past decade."

The nearly three trillion dollar increase in the Debt Ceiling will take away all pressure on Congress to implement responsible spending policies for the next eighteen months, ensuring that spending and debt issues will not be prominent during the 2012 campaigns.

"This deal is a blatant violation of the promise from House Speaker John Boehner that every dollar of new debt would be matched by a dollar of cuts," noted RLC National Chairman Dave Nalle. "All of the cuts are stretched over ten years, while the deficit spending will occur in less than eighteen months," explains Nalle, "which means that we're actually getting less than ten cents of current cuts for every dollar of perpetual debt. That's not a deal, it's a blank check for bigger government."

The final plan includes unspecified spending cuts, which would be spread over ten years. For the coming fiscal year, there will be real cuts of less than $100 billion dollars. Since the bill assumes that the same level of reduced spending will continue for ten years, the "savings" are simply added together, for the supposed $1 trillion of cuts. There's no real plan for specific long term cuts.

"Whether it's one trillion or three trillion, it's meaningless," explains RLC Northeast Regional Director Vic Berardelli of Maine. "The Supreme Court has already ruled and all legislators acknowledge, that one Congress cannot impose any obligations on a future Congress," says Berardelli. "That means that all of the promised cuts are not binding on the federal government after the next election. They might as well not even exist"

The Supreme Court threw out the Gramm-Rudman Balanced Budget Act in July 1986, as a violation of the Constitution, by a 7-2 vote. Every prior budget authorization must be renewed by the new Congress, or it simply expires.

"There are no real cuts in the debt ceiling compromise," says California RLC Director David Johnson. "Instead there are just promises of cuts to 'projected spending," which is another way of saying they've eased up slightly on the accelerator of the car heading for the cliff. These guys aren't even trying. I fully understand that the big cuts needed from defense and entitlement are controversial. But where are the smaller uncontroversial cuts? Why are there no cuts in corporate welfare? Why no cuts in foreign aid?" …

The rest can be found here.

Deficit reduction fraud explained.

Image, the way mainstream Americans must be feeling right now.

The latest Libertarian Party newsletter contains this gem in which Mark Grannis and Arvin Vohra explain just how and why the new bipartisan deal on deficit reduction results in Americans being duded again.

Arvin: "I just saved $350,000."

Mark: "How?"

Arvin: "By not buying a Ferrari in 2016!"

Mark: "Nice."


The use of double speak is not exclusive to the US though. Here we see tax hikes described as government savings. In reality this indicates that they think that the proportion of our earnings they don't take off us is wasted.

Gillard/Brown/Abbott will take us beyond ‘Atlas Shrugged’, to ‘Atlas Shagged’ if this attitude persists.

"Know Your Ruling Class Elite" series.

Maksim over at the Peoples Cube has started an amusing series of sharing cards featuring some of your best-known, if not beloved members of the ruling class in America. Here is a sample:

Harry Reid and John McCain are featured as well at this stage. Here is the link.

Convoy of No Confidence update; Routes released.

This site supports the NRFA organized “Convoy of No Confidence in the Federal Government,” and has posted twice on it. The organizers can feel proud of the effort they have put into it, with eight routes announced along with timings. It is to be hoped that we will see thousands of vehicles from even the remotest parts of the nation, converge on Canberra on the 22nd of August.

The details can be seen here.

Those taking part are urged to carefully read the details of the routes taken and prepare yourselves, especially those covering longer distances. At the bottom of the post there is a section of advice, which should be taken very seriously, particularly by those from Darwin and the West. The outback has always been an unforgiving place towards the unprepared, the unwary, the unlucky, the inexperienced, and the lost and still is, trust me on that.

The only other advice is at this stage, bring plenty of warm gear to rug up with, Canberra is a bastard of a place at the best of times, and in winter it is worse.

It is believed that the founding fathers put it where it is in the hope that nobody would go there, thus legislators would stay away and leave the rest of us alone to get on with our lives. Unfortunately, air conditioning, government limos, and power lust have largely negated this.

Washington was founded on a fever swamp for the same reason, but it has been found since, that the type of creatures drawn to politics in the main, regard this as their natural environment.

Wireless Internet shows hazards of picking winners.

Cartoon: by Nicholson.

The news that technology guru Steve Perlman, sometimes described as the Thomas Edison of Silicon Valley has developed a new ultra high speed wireless technology that could rival speeds on the National Broadband Network has profound implications for the federal government. Labor policy wonks came up with the NBN as a vote-buying exercise prior to the 2007 election.

While cooler heads warned of advances in technology, which could make it redundant, the government plowed ahead, deeming it too important even for such basic requirements as a cost benefit analysis. People had been promised an expensive fiber to the node system, and they were getting it despite the price tag of around $43 Billion.

At this stage the NBN has just 41 active customers at its two operating mainland test sites, despite more than 6000 homes having been connected to the grid and access being offered for free.

The new DIDO technology which allows download speeds up to 1000 times faster than possible on conventional wireless networks, without any fall in speed as more users get on to the network, is a few years away yet. But so is the NBN, so at about the time it is finished this will be appearing. If this is the case then the government’s plans to sell NBN off later will come to little.

The opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the wireless breakthrough underlined the importance of being "technology agnostic" when it came to choosing broadband solutions to meet the nation's needs. Malcolm is as statist as Rudd and Gillard on this, but Australia has a long history of involving itself in areas where it has no business.

Contrary to Turnbull’s assertion, it really doesn’t matter whether "technology agnostic" or a true believer in one or the other, the government has no place in picking winners on issues.

There are numerous options out there with others like DIDO in the pipeline. The public has differing requirements for individual services, which can be best met, by a healthy marketplace full of competing services. What the government has done is to decide on one of those and set it up as a one size fits all model. Malcolm feels that this action is OK; it’s just that they may have picked the wrong one.

If DIDO gets up, it wouldn’t matter a damn what system was chosen as the standard, DIDO has come after the decision was made and would not have been chosen, even by Turnbull. What is apparent is that government has no place in the marketplace in a free society.