Bureaucracy Gone Mad

According to the Courier Mail (no link) the Environmental Impact Statement provided by Santos LNG for its proposed Gladstone coal seam gas to LNG plant is 13,500 pages long and weighs 65kg.

While the third party harm principle allows for some level of environmental protection (insofar as environmental harm can directly effect third parties) those risks could not possibly take 13,500 pages to evaluate?

Just another case of the wealth taking sector of the economy placing roadblocks in the way of the wealth generating sector to appease the welfare recieving, hemp wearing sector.

Unbiased

The Friends of the ABC says two new appointments to the ABC board show efforts to stop political interference are moving in the right direction.

If Friends of the ABC said that it almost certainly means the appointees are notorious lefties.

More from Andrew Bolt.

Fairness in the family court.

A heartening step from the Family Court:

TWO children who have been in the care of their mother since their parents separated in 2005 have been sent from Hobart to live with their father in Melbourne after the Family Court heard the mother encouraged them to have "negative" feelings about their dad...

..."These children are slowly indoctrinated into believing that their father is cruel and unkind and likely to hurt them, when this is not the case," the psychologist said.

It is about time women who use their children as weapons against their ex-husbands/partners had their right to parent withdrawn.

In my experience this is not an isolated case.

Liar

Australia's censor in chief tries to drop something down the memory hole:

Senator Conroy said the Government had never claimed the filter itself would stop child pornography.

"We've never tried to pretend that this was a silver bullet, we've never tried to suggest this was the sole solution,'' Senator Conroy said...

"If I stood up anywhere and said 'hey, this filter will block peer-to-peer' then rightfully I should be ridiculed,'' he said.

"I've never said that ... it is not designed to deal with peer-to-peer.''

Fortunately he has been caught out:

Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin said Senator Conroy's comments were at odds with previous statements.

Senator Conroy previously said:

"Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial," Senator Conroy says on the website.

If Conroy is so willing to lie about this why should we believe his assurances that he will not censor political content? Particularly given the fact that his thought police banned links to a political site.

All is not as it seems

Reading this:

The right-wing MLC and strict Catholic, known for his conservative views, was promoting a lobby group committed to stamping out the sexualisation of children.

...you would assume Greg Donnely was a Liberal, National or Independent.

He is in fact part of the ALP.

This is not mentioned once in the article - makes one wonder about institutional bias in the Courier Mail.

It also makes one wonder about the assumptions created about those of us who consider ourselves right.

I am an economic liberial (in the classical sense) and pretty laissez-faire socially - yet I am lumped in with clowns like this.

Conservative catholocism (or conservative or radical pretty much anything-ism) is inherently of the left because it seeks to control and prescribe how we as individuals can live our lives. The sooner people realise this the better.

The hallmark of the left is control, both economically and socially - as the two are symbiotic. The hallmark of the right is freedom, both economic and social for the same reason.

Out of Government

What is it with former Labor economic Ministers? They always seem to get a lot smarter once they are out of office.

Take Michael Costa in today's Oz, commenting on the latest piece of policy dross from our glorious Treasurer:

WAYNE Swan's legislation requiring shareholders to approve executive termination payments worth more than a year's base salary is another political stunt from a government that has run out of economic policy steam.

As well as nailing the Treasurer for his class warfare crap Costa also analyses what appear to be some of Swan's simplistic motivations:

Swan seems to think the interests of the broader community and the individual shareholder are one and the same. They are not. Shareholders want their companies to do well. Often this is at the expense of other companies and their shareholders. The community, on the other hand, wants the best and cheapest products. Workers want their firm to survive and provide job security. Their job security and wages, despite union attempts to take wages out of competition, often come at the expense of rival firms. Workers want the equity investments in their super funds to perform well even if they happen to be in rival firms. These are the fundamental tensions in our economic system. It is the creative destruction that provides our enviable standard of living. The sooner the Government wakes up to this, the better off we all will be.

Of course, when one looks at the Treasurers employment history his failings are easy to understand - he has never held a private sector job.

Sea-kittens resemble people

This is beyond ridicule.

Headline of the Week

Name Shame Causes Cock Shrinkage but Wang is on the Rise

Lessons Learnt

Sinophile, pathological liar and occasional Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had lunch with the head of the Chinese Communist Party propoganda machine, Li Changchun.

The funny thing is that media whore Rudd didn't tell the media; except of course through his fawning commentary suggesting that China should play a bigger role in the IMF.

Yet China's state-owned media was ushered into The Lodge and Mr Rudd was splashed across the Chinese press with footage of his talks on the nation's main television station CCTV. As a result, hundreds of millions of Chinese knew more about Mr Rudd's diplomatic activities than did his own countrymen. Australians were therefore none the wiser about what motivated Mr Rudd to declare on Sunday, less than 24 hours after meeting Mr Li, that he would push for China to be given a more central role in the global financial system. Mr Rudd will argue for China to be elevated within the IMF at next week's meeting of the G20 in London.

Rudd's excuse:

When asked why such an important meeting would be kept from the Australian media at such a crucial time in the bilateral relationship, a spokeswoman for Mr Rudd told The Australian: "It was a private meeting between the two. It is not the Prime Minister of Australia's role to put out a press release announcing what every visiting politician is doing."

Of course that didn't stop him lying about the content of a conversation he had with George Bush or his spouting off about conversations he has had or over-heard.

Still - maybe he was just trying to get tips on the best way to filter undesirable internet content from the experts.

Principled stand

AUSTRALIA'S third largest internet service provider (ISP) has pulled out of the Government's web filtering trials, saying the plan is "no longer just about stopping child porn."

Of course the plan was never about stopping access to child-porn but rather was driven by the desire of the ALP and its thought-police to regulate what material adults can access.

Still, kudos to iiNet, not just for pulling the pin but for explaining why:

The Government's plan involves a nation-wide filter that stops "unwanted material" from appearing on Australian user's computer screens.

iiNet says the ambiguity of "unwanted material" is what caused it to pull out of the trials.

“We are not able to reconcile participation in the trial with our corporate social responsibility, our customer service objectives and our public position on censorship,” iiNet managing director Michael Malone said in a statement.

“It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as 'unwanted material' without an explanation of what that includes."

If ever there was an illustration of how the government intends to abuse this power it is the banning of a US anti-abortion site and the stand-over man tactics applied to get an Australian site to stop linking to it ($11k fine per-day).

The idea of a secret government blacklist of material that I am not allow to view because it is undesirable reminds me of the language of certain regime's which do not value individual freedoms:

BEIRUT, March 16, 2009 (MENASSAT) - In the report titled, “Enemies of the Internet,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) accused authorities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Tunisia, of “transforming their Internet into an Intranet,” in an effort to hinder the public from accessing online information deemed “undesirable” by the national government.

The four Arab states, along with Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, are the top countries that allegedly practice the most extensive Internet censorship in the world, earning RSF’s title “Internet enemies.”

RSF’s report states that the web censorship practiced in these countries is often based on a government policy of "protecting morals," "national security," religion and ethnic minorities.

This says it all:

Appeasement

To borrow from Winston Churchill - Barack Obama is a sheep in sheep's clothing:

IRAN has responded negatively to overtures by US President Barack Obama for improved relations, but has stopped short of an all-out rejection of ending three decades of hostility.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a rally in the northeast of the country on the weekend that while the US used "the slogan of change", in reality nothing really changed.

While he criticised the US and its history with Iran, he also left open the possibility of improved relations.

He told the crowd that his message to Washington was: "We will watch and we will judge - you change, our behaviour will change."

...In a dramatic change of tone, Mr Obama said in a video address on Friday that the US wanted Iran to take "its rightful place in the community of nations", but said there were conditions for this to happen.

Their rightful place is one where they are excluded:

...George W. Bush branded Iran part of the "axis of evil", and called it a terrorist nation seeking to gain nuclear weapons.

Interesting how the so called moron knows that appeasement never works; while the allegedly visionary has no understanding of the lessons of history.

Queensland Election Watch

For the record my guesstimate on tommorows result is:

ALP: 40
LNP: 46
IND: 3

Just thought I'd throw it out there.

Just Desserts

As predicted, former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld has been goaled for perjury.

Einfeld was sentenced to 3 years prision with a 2 year non-parole period.

In his sentencing remarks James J found that Einfeld had engaged in planned criminal activity.

He also described Einfeld's lies as deliberate, premeditated perjury.

Considering the position of responsibility and trust Einfeld held he should consider himself lucky he didn't recieve double the sentence.

UPDATE: Sentencing remarks here.

Internet Censorship

This:


Neatly sums-up the great big hole in the federal governments argument for internet censorship.

Via the aptly named website: Stephen Conroy is a c--t.

Bumbling Idiot

Another one from the if it had have been Bush files:

... here is how US Vice-President Joe Biden explained the Obama administration’s strategy to help small business. He was asked on the CBS Early Show by a viewer who had laid off most of her staff last year how the US President’s trillion-dollar stimulus package would help small business. Biden was plainly stumped. After buying time by suggesting the woman contact his office, he then spluttered that “it may very well be that she’s in a circumstance where she is not able, her customers aren’t able to get to her, there’s no transit capability, the bridge going across the creek to get to her business needs repair, may very well be that she’s in a position where she is unable to access the - her energy costs are so high by providing smart meters, by being able to bring down the cost of her workforce”.

This is not a spoof. Either Biden is a buffoon who does not know his stuff or there is no stuff to know. The best Biden could conjure up for a small business owner was to build a bridge to improve her customers’ “transit capacity” and smart meters so she can count her energy costs.

I am going for buffoon - although there is little doubt that the Obama administration has no idea of what it is doing and no understanding that it is the private sector that generates wealth.

Another reason to win...

I was reflecting this morning on the Qld State Election and how rattled the ALP seem to be.

The attack ads aimed at LNP deputy leader Mark McArdle are far more grubby than anything I have seen from Qld Labor in a long time.

They are also defamatory, something which is becoming a bit of a theme for Labor in this election.

Remember the slurs that Bligh and Fraser levelled against Clive Palmer?

Those comments are defamatory too. A pattern is emerging.

While I couldn't care less about Bligh and Fraser defaming Clive Palmer, I do have a problem with their expectation that the taxpayer foot the bill for their defence.

That is why it is good to see Lawrence Springborg saying that if he is elected Premier then Crown Law will not defend Bligh and Fraser - meaning that for once they will have to wear the consequences of their own actions.

Ridout Grows Spine

I gave Heather Ridout a fair touch-up here about her relationship with the Rudd government; and her willingness to endorse their policies sight unseen.

Maybe I was a bit harsh:

Ms Ridout says the Rudd Government has broken its word after repeated assurances that bargaining for low-paid workers would not involve "compulsory arbitration" if negotiations fail.

Still - she is supposed to be a senior industry lobbyist - surely she should have known better than to believe that serial liar Kevin Rudd was telling the truth.

It must have been terribly embarassing to have been caught out like this.

Raaaacist!

As my better half said this morning: if Howard had have made this change he would have been labelled racist.

AUSTRALIA'S intake of skilled migrants will be slashed by 18,500 over the next three months — 14 per cent of the annual intake — in a dramatic move to protect local jobs.

Oh that's right, the decision was made by the Labor government; which has the support of the race baiters on the left.

Dear John... Shut-up

Failed former opposition leader John Hewson:

"Costello is just being a petulant child these days," Dr Hewson told Sky News, adding the former treasurer was taking his bat and ball home because he wasn't made captain.

"In the schoolyard analogy, somebody should take him out behind the dunny and beat him up at some point."

It was "ridiculous" Mr Turnbull was being denied the opportunity to do something because Mr Costello was "basically doing nothing".

When is the media going to stop paying attention to this bitter old man's exersises in self-indulgence.

One wonders if his attacks on Costello are symptomatic of a combination of jealousy and deep seated feelings of inadequacy.

Innocent until proven guilty

Federal Minister for the Status of Women Tanya Plibersek weighed into the Brett Stewart debate when she:

...criticised Stewart’s planned return to the field on Saturday in light of the charges laid against him over the alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl.

"I think that it is quite disappointing," she said.

"I think my personal view is that it would be more appropriate for him to stand aside while investigations are conducted but, of course, this is an issue for the rugby league to decide.

"They need to make a decision on the basis of what they feel is an appropriate image for their code."

On a personal level I don't care one way or the other about Stewart or Manly and have no opinion on his innocence or guilt.

What I find amazing is that we have a Federal Government Minister making comments on whether he should be allowed to continue working pending the outcome of these charges.

Would Tanya demand others stand aside from their work on the basis of an unproven allegation - and hence, in the event they are innocent, be punished for nothing?

There seems to be an assumption here that the alleged victim is telling the truth. If she is Stewart deserves whatever punishment he gets; but what if, for whatever reason, she isn't?

That is why we have a presumption of innocence.

UPDATE: The thing I find even more amazing is that there is a Minister for the Status of Women.

UPDATE II: We now have the White House Council on Women and Girls:

"The purpose of this Council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy," Obama said.

What's the bet that "treated fairly" really means treated "preferentially".

Keynsian's Hate Freedom

This quote from Peter Kline (via catallaxy) pretty much sums up what I think of Keynesians:

...the Keynesian delusion afflicts not only policymakers, but professional economists as well. I’ve long suspected that the appeal of Keynes to people like Krugman and DeLong is ultimately based on aesthetic, not scientific, grounds. Deep in their hearts, they just don’t like private property, markets, and individual choice. They don’t think ordinary people are capable of making wise decisions and think they, the elites, should be in charge. They resent the fact that most people don’t want their lives controlled by liberal intellectuals. Technical arguments about the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy, the relationship between aggregate demand and output, the experience of the 1930s, and the like are really beside the point. For Keynesian economists, the belief that markets are naturally unstable in the absence of government planning is a matter of faith.

Queensland Election - Some Personal Observations

I was just walking down Margaret Street contemplating making a post about the Queensland State Election, the LNP and why I fear an LNP victory when the Borg Express passed me by. I’m not usually a superstitious person, but the coincidence has firmed my resolve to get a couple of things off my chest.

I actively opposed the merger of the Liberal and National parties, for a range of reasons. But I guess the biggest reason is my complete and total rejection of what the National Party represents.

A cheeky wag once pointed out that Billy Hughes (former Australian Prime Minister) had been a member of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party (mark 1), the United Australia Party, the Nationalist Party, the National Labor Party and the Australian Party. Said wag asked why Hughes hadn’t ever joined the Country (now National) Party. Hughes responded by saying that even he had some standards. I support his sentiments.

With few exceptions the National Party represents rank sectional interests: pastoralists seeking government favour, agricultural interests seeking protection of their unsustainable farming practices, small and unsustainable communities who have been left behind by changes to industry, communications and technology. The National Party has historically been a foil against progress, either economic or social.

The great liberal reforms Queensland has undergone in the last two decades: trading hours liberalisation; the legalisation of brothels and prostitution; abortion law reform; electoral reform; and legislative modernisation – among others – have occurred in spite of the National Party, not because of it.

For decades Liberal Party activism ameliorated the worst of the National Party’s excesses. Without Liberal support the Nationals found it difficult to form Government, and securing Liberal support required a muting of the National Party’s worst tendencies toward extreme reactionism.

I fear that with the merger those voices of progress and reason will be gagged and systematically annihilated. We have already seen this happen in relation to tree clearing policy and daylight savings.

The former Liberal Party may have been dysfunctional, but at least it stood for something. It stood for a reliance on free markets and lesser economic regulation, it stood for modernisation and progress. It also, in many parts of the party, stood for social liberalisation, in extending social freedoms to people in the same way that the party’s philosophy argues for economic freedoms for individuals.

The National Party believes in little or none of this.

I truly hope that the LNP wins, and that as a result of its election a tranche of moderates are elected to the Parliament who will help dull the National’s natural tendencies. But I fear that this simply won’t happen.

That’s one of the reasons why this blog exists. Because there is a fourth way, a way that is neither collectivist, conservative or liberal (in the European sense). There is a way forward that celebrates individuals and individualism; that promotes economic growth through lesser regulation and a greater reliance on economic freedoms; that promotes social cohesion through deregulation of or social sphere and rejection of homogeneity.

There used to be a political vehicle for people who wished to promote these ideals, and now it is gone. Subsumed into a party that has little to offer Queenslanders except a (partial) return to the dark bad old days where Queensland was (rightfully) a backward backwater full of reactionary hicks, corrupt officials, brown paper bags and no Sunday shopping.

Religion of peace

This is how members of the religion of peace decided to welcome Britians' 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment back from Iraq.










A picture says a thousand words.

Still, there is some fight left in the Brits - with the crowd turning on the protesters:



Reminds me a bit of John Smeaton.

My message for the protesters:

A new home

I am moving to the Czech Republic:

Massive government spending and tighter regulation would prolong recession, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday, as he urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to endanger the free market economy in his response to the financial crisis.

In a speech at Columbia University in New York, Klaus, a former Czech prime minister who championed the free market after the fall of Communism 20 years ago, said he never expected to see such extensive government intervention again in his lifetime as he now sees around the world.

"I am therefore convinced that fighting for freedom and free markets, something we always appreciated here in this country (the United States), remains the task of the day," Klaus said.

The man speaks a lot of sense:

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

Chinese Emboldened

This wouldn't have happened under Bush:

FIVE Chinese vessels manoeuvred dangerously close to a US Navy ship in the South China Sea on Sunday, closing within eight metres of the unarmed surveillance ship, the Pentagon said...

The Chinese ships surrounded the USNS Impeccable, and after two ships came within 15 metres, waved Chinese flags and told the Americans to leave the area, the Defence Department said in a statement...

The US ship's commander asked the Chinese ships by radio "in a friendly manner" for a safe path to leave the area, it said...

Two Chinese boats then moved directly in front of the Impeccable, forcing it to take emergency action to avoid collision, and then dropped pieces of wood into its path, it said.

Sounds like they are testing Obama out, which isn't surprising after this:

U.S. President Barack Obama's proposal to reach out to moderate Taliban will fail to end the Afghan insurgency as it is inflexible Taliban leaders who are orchestrating the war, not moderates, analysts said.

Coupled with this we can really see Obama's foreign policy nous.

Still I guess he could just focus on the 57 states.

Labour Relations

Sounds like the perfect time for increased labour market regulation:

THE total number of job advertisements in Australia fell 10.4 per cent last month, signalling a collapse in the labour market.

According to a survey by ANZ, total job ads fell to an average of 161,583 ads per week, contributing to a 39.8 per cent annual decline.

Gift Imbalance

Imagine if it had have been Bush:

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. The Prime Minister gave him an ornamental desk pen-holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President. The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office. And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In return, America’s head of state gave the Prime Minister 25 DVDs of classic American movies.

Via Andrew Bolt

Jules Crittenden offers some thoughts on the reasoning behing the gift:

Here’s a Brit who posits “Lady Macbeth” was behind the Obamas’ slighting of America’s staunchest ally. UK Telegraph again. That’s higher praise than Michelle deserves. His evidence goes back to her Princeton days, but he hit the mark before he got to that part: They did it because they could. In the most juvenile way possible, they wanted to show they’re in charge, things are different, they have other priorities, and besides, Britain needs to be punished for its Bush enablance. Either that or neither of them are really that bright.

Another thought. Sadder. Maybe just ill-bred.*

The Obama administration seems a little gaffe prone when it comes to the giving of gifts:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in greeting Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, presented him with a red plastic button emblazoned with the English word “reset” and the Russian word “peregruzka.”

The gift was a play on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s call in Munich last month for the two countries to “press the reset button” on their relationship.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word,” Mrs. Clinton said, handing the button to Mr. Lavrov. “Do you think we got it?”

“You got it wrong,” he replied, explaining that the Americans had come up with the Russian word for overcharged.

Update:

QLD Election Watch 2009

The Crime and Misconduct Commission has launched a probe into the role ALP candidate for Bulimba, Di Farmer, played in approving a $131k government grant to the Mitchelton Soccer Club.

The grant was allegedly the price of club president Rohan Clarke's vote in the pre-selection of boy Treasurer Andrew Frasers' chief of staff Michael Dart - for the council ward of Enoggera.

Must have hurt when, after all of that effort, he lost the election to 23 year old Liberal kid Andrew Wines.

This could hurt Captain Bligh who is facing a mutiny from Queensland voters; however it is a little early to get too excited - after all Beattie won despite the Shepherdson Enquiry into vote rorting - something with which the Premier's chief of staff is quite familar.

Thought of the Week

The people most likely to criticise the pay and conditions of CEO's are the people least likely to ever recieve them.

One of us?

In response to being accurately labelled a toxic bore by Tony Abbott the great leader responds:

Defending his Government's decision to spend $42 billion to save the nation's faltering economy, Mr Rudd warned punters to expect a "political s---storm" during a pre-recorded interview of Channel 7's Sunday Night program that aired last night.

And gets pinged for it by Robert Doyle

Melbourne's Liberal Lord Mayor Robert Doyle told Sky News this morning that the colourful language was no accident. "I don't think he dropped it, I think it was a carefully scripted attempt to make himself appear human ... one of the lads," he said.

Of course he has form:

Kevin Rudd swore on camera a fair bit during his day in Afghanistan last week. Two s--ts, a bugger and a bloody. He also dropped his g's and lowered his language level generally. At Tarin Kowt, he reminded the reconstruction taskforce soldiers of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event over which Australia went to war, with the declaration: "Bugger that for a joke, we're in."

He was pinged then too:

It was Rudd the verbal chameleon, changing his language to suit his audience. The critics soon emerged, with one former diplomat citing it as a lack of character for a prime minister to feel to need "to speak like a wharfie". "Most people can see straight through that," he said.

Of course the funniest thing about all of this is that he is not speaking like an average Aussie, but like a caricature of one.

The face of cowardice

Kristopher Cowie:



Was goaled for two years for assaulting 82 year old WWII Digger Earnest Evens (inset).

Cowie's charming girlfriend Tracey Prater was acquitted of charges relating to the incident.

In Sutherland Local Court this afternoon, Cowie was sentenced to two years in prison, with a minimum sentence of 15 months. He will be eligible for parole in April 2011...

Witnesses said Cowie punched Mr Evans at least three times after his request for 50 cents was refused, knocking him to the ground, Sutherland Local Court heard today.

Surely the penalty for the cowardly assault of a man of that age would have to be at the upper end of the scale - assault occasioning actual bodily harm is punishable by 7 years imprisionment in NSW.

It isn't as though the guy is contributing to society:

The court heard Cowie was already serving a 12 month jail term for threatening to kill airport security staff. He was due for release in January 2010.

Or as though he showed any remorse:

Cowie claimed he had been acting in self defence because Mr Evans had waved his walking stick at him and told him to get a job. He said Mr Evans attacked him first

.
Or told the truth:

But Magistrate Clare Farnan said neither of the witnesses supported Cowie's version of events.

One said she had not seen Mr Evans throw any punches and the other said he had only thrown one, after he had been hit.

"He was quite impressed when he saw the older man hit the younger man in trying to defend himself," Ms Farnan said.

She did not accept Cowie's claim of self defence.

"A reasonable person in the position of Mr Cowie, confronted by an elderly person waving a walking stick would walk away," Ms Farnan said.

The manifestly inadequite sentence here isn't a failure of the law however - it is a failure of the Judge.

At least Cowie was unimpressed:

As he left the dock, Cowie said "that's f---ing bullshit'', and grabbed his girlfriend's hand before security moved him out of the courtroom.

Judgement of the Market?

A classic from Michelle Malkin:



And an amusing graph from Andrew Bolt showing the relationship between Obama's popularity and market performance:




Where is the hope in that?

A fair days work...

Members of the notoriously corrupt Construction Division of Victoria's CFMEU are blockading construction work on the re-development of the Royal Childrens Hospital, Melbourne.

The dispute arose from management's introduction of a swipe card system to stop this:

With the blessing and sanction of the union, it is alleged that workers were pretending to be present at the site while spending time at a nearby pub for hours and hours, day after day. It’s a huge site and management clearly were having issues keeping track of all the workers.

Makes you wonder why the ALP wants to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission by 2010.

A fair day's work for a fair day's pay this isn't.

Admission made

WAYNE Swan has admitted there is little the federal Government can do to limit salaries of executives of companies outside the finance sector.

Little except engage in the politics of envy that is.

The Treasurer said yesterday that while the Government was working on penalising banks that paid bonuses to encourage risky investment practices, its powers over pay contracts in other private companies were limited.

Of course:

The admission follows angry attacks on corporate greed last week by a series of government ministers.

Threats made...

Funny how North Korea - which can't even provide its people with electricity:



Can make threats like this...

"Our military and people cherish peace and do not want war," Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling communist party, said in a commentary.

"But should the enemies invade even 0.001 mm into our territory, we will mobilise all our potential and deal retaliatory strikes that will be hundreds of thousands of times stronger."

The paper added: "The United States and its puppet forces must learn that (the North's) revolutionary armed forces' strong military countermeasures will be taken in the form of resolute and merciless acts that cannot be matched by any means."

...against nations which can keep the lights on.



Kind of reminds me of this little fellow:

GFC and Climate Change

A friend sent the following article to me in relation to one of the root causes for the global financial crisis. And seriously its worth a read if you want to get yet another insight into our current plight.

However the last two paragraphs really caught my eye:

In the world of finance, too many quants see only the numbers before them and forget about the concrete reality the figures are supposed to represent. They think they can model just a few years' worth of data and come up with probabilities for things that may happen only once every 10,000 years. Then people invest on the basis of those probabilities, without stopping to wonder whether the numbers make any sense at all.

As Li himself said of his own model: "The most dangerous part is when people believe everything coming out of it."

Now in the first sentence remove the words "in the world of finance" and replace with "in the world of climate change science" and re-read.

Nuff said.

Its just a cult.

The right-wing blogosphere has got it wrong. You can’t call Julia Gillard’s new guidelines for grovelling the foundations for a personality cult – for that to be true she would need a personality.

Queensland Election Watch 2009

Lawrence Springborgs' promise to save $1 Billion in waste from the state budget is a clever one; straight out of the Krudd playbook on how to look economically responsible without costing yourself a vote.

Rudd's efficiency dividend didn’t cost him many votes because public servants will, by and large, vote for the ALP regardless of policy.

It won’t cost Springborg much either because the only people against the policy (public servants and assorted lefties) wouldn't vote for him anyway.

In addition to making the opposition look economically responsible, it paints the government into a corner, because they can’t match the dividend without admitting to having being wasteful and their alternative – defending public service jobs - is not a vote winner with the broader community.

Put your money where your mouth is.

An excellent article in the Australian by Alex Robinson:

THERE is a view going around Canberra that the Government's planned emissions trading scheme will put a floor as well as a cap on emissions, and that once a target is chosen, emissions will not be able to fall below that floor.

This view would be correct if:

...the number of permits in circulation could never fall, then the Australia Institute view would be correct: if a business or individual were to reduce their emissions then the demand for permits would be lower than it otherwise would be, and commensurate number of permits would be freed up in the system for useelsewhere.

Hence the conclusion follows that there would be nothing that any individual or business could do to reduce aggregate emissions.

However, once the price cap is removed:

there is always another option for citizens who are concerned about climate change: the "buy and hoard" method of emissions reductions.

By purchasing and hoarding permits environmentalists could prevent that emission allocation being used - therefore reducing total emissions.

Of course they would have to fund their own radical beliefs and since most greenies are watermelons (green on the outside and red in the middle) Robinson rightly concludes that:

They would rather compel the community as a whole to bear all the costs than to reduce their own lobbying output. The last thing they want to do is to go out into the market and try to persuade business to reduce emissions by paying them to do so, even though that is the logical and most straightforward way of reducing emissions under an ETS.

QLD Election watch 2009

The ALP are due to release their latest ad in tonight's peak time television slots. It's here in case you're interested.

Its similarly themed to the last one - the "front ending jobs" and making positions "de-necessary" ad - and its pretty effective at lampooning a guy who isn't the best media performer in the world.

The ad really brings this election into sharp focus for the LNP. To win they need to pick up an astronomical swing of 8.9% and to do that, they are going to have to take this type of attack on head on.

Pretty tough when you're most recognizable quote is about making jobs "de-necessary".

Demeaning the Office

GOVERNOR-General Quentin Bryce has raised eyebrows by ordering private security briefings from top public servants - including the head of the armed forces.

Of course she has raised eyebrows, sections 62 and 63 of the constitution are quite clear about her role; she exercises her powers on the advice of the executive council, not on the advice of public servants.

The only time she is permitted to consider or accept advice outside that given by the executive council is when she is exercising the reserve powers.

Two weeks ago, Ms Bryce summoned the head of the defence forces, Air Chief Marshall, Angus Houston, along with the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Michael L'Estrange and the Treasury Secretary, Dr Ken Henry to her official Canberra residence, Yarralumla...

A spokeswoman confirmed the official briefings by three departmental heads was the first of its kind in the 107-year history of the office.

It followed another first for the Governor-General, a televised address to the nation by Ms Bryce following the devastating loss of life in the Victorian bush fires.

The spokeswoman said Ms Bryce regarded her request for the briefings as "appropriate'' given global economic conditions - and the fact Australian soldiers were serving on the front line in Afghanistan.

Sorry Quentin - there are no reserve powers for you to exercise in relation to the GFC or Afghanistan.

And the bushfire thing that seems like little more than an attempt to get her mug on the box; still what more can we expect from a lifelong activist:

Ms Bryce said she was most proud of her time as sex discrimination commissioner and being a champion of equality of opportunity and fighting against sexual harassment.

"I've never owned a pair of jeans but I had a fantastic denim boiler-suit and it got a lot of wearing," she recalled.

The controversy probably wouldn't have happened if she had retained senior staff:

Ms Bryce caused a flurry on arrival at Yarralumla by sacking long-serving Official Secretary Malcolm Hazell from his $225,000 job, replacing him with ex-ambassador Stephen Brady.

Mr Hazell had been on former prime minister John Howard's personal staff. Ms Bryce's predecessor, Major-General Michael Jeffery was reportedly "livid'' and confronted Ms Bryce over the sacking.

Ms Bryce has a chequered history in retaining senior employees. In her five-year term as Queensland Governor, there was a revolving door of personnel at Government House.

Anyone wonder why this egotist had trouble retaining senior staff?