Rudd calls for new era of "social capitalism"
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past three decades and called for a new era of "social capitalism".
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Japan makes aid pledge as Davos wraps up
Japanese PM Taro Aso has pledged Y1.5 trillion yen ($A25.6 billion) in aid to other Asian countries on Saturday as leaders wrapped up the Davos forum.
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Tax cuts tipped for low-income earners
Low-income earners will benefit from tax cuts expected to be announced by the federal government as part of a stimulus package to boost the economy.
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Heatwave 'a natural disaster'
Victorians have only narrowly escaped being placed on severe power restrictions after the government considered enacting emergency powers to respond to the explosion of a major electrical substation on Friday night.
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Mother kills daughter to hold onto boyfriend
A mother in easternmost Canada pleaded guilty on Friday to murdering her only child in a twisted bid to save her relationship with a boyfriend, a court official said.
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Residents shocked by deliberately lit fires
Local residents are shocked and angry that a huge bushfire in Victoria's east was deliberately lit, Victorian Nationals leader Peter Ryan says.
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Butchershop bloodshed results in eight deaths
Fans up in arms over Youtube music crackdown
Gillard: World can learn from our banking regulations
Man killed in 'shocking' knife attack visiting baby
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Heather Mills named Britain's Moodiest Celebrity
Heather Mills has been named Britain’s Moodiest Celebrity.
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Ethos that vaulted the Berlin Wall
Piers Akerman
CANDIDATE Kevin Rudd, the bloke from Queensland who believed in conservative capitalism and signed on for 98 per cent of the Coalition government’s policies while campaigning against it, has now emerged as the new anti-capitalist Godzilla. - When Rudd says something, like Working Families, Economic Conservatism, Sincere Apology or any of many different things, you need not worry .. it is only a phrase he is passing through .. he will eventually discard it, as he has done all else. Eventually the public will see through it .. but I despair of the mainstream press of ever doing anything other than blanket support of the empty phrase until another supplants it.
Eventually, we will all be mugged by reality. - ed.
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Where did our “economic conservative” go?
Andrew Bolt
Just before the last election, Kevin Rudd boasted that being an ”economic conservative” was “a badge I wear with pride”.
That was just a year after he’d boasted in The Monthly that he was in fact a ”Christian socialist”.
Now, a year after his election ads, and in the very same Monthly, Rudd has pinned yet another badge to his chest. Forget “economic conservative”:
Not for the first time in history, the international challenge for social democrats is to save capitalism from itself:..(T)he time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes ...(T)he social-democratic state offers the best guarantee of preserving the productive capacity of properly regulated competitive markets, while ensuring that government is the regulator, that government is the funder or provider of public goods and that government offsets the inevitable inequalities of the market...
Which is the real Rudd? The socialist, the conservative or the “social democrat” rejecting the “great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years” and demanding a “a new contract for the future”?
Whichever it is, I think voters have been had.
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Gore’s core iced
Andrew Bolt
Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (above) notoriously showed ice core data suggesting that each warming period in the past was caused by higher carbon dioxide levels - which means our own higher CO2 levels should have us terrified.
As Gore claimed in the film:
The relationship is actually very complicated but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside.
But, of course, the ice core data shows no such thing. As I pointed out to Gore at a seminar at Pebble Beach three years ago, the data seems to show that exact opposite - that temperatures rose at each warming some 800 years (on average) before carbon dioxide levels rose. This suggests not that warming in the past was caused by extra carbon dioxide, at least initially, but the very reverse.
Hot gospelling scientists get angry and abusive when you point this out, and ABC outfits like Robyn ”100 metres” Williams’ Science Show and Media Watch launch inquisitions to punish such heresy. But the data is clear on this point. See, for instance, the Vostok data:
All this is now almost uncontentious among scientists, at least, but engineer Frank Lansner, on Watts Up With That, points out an even more obvious problem that destroys the Gore theory.
The worst problem with using the ice cores to prove that carbon dioxide rises in the past caused temperatures to rise isn’t that the temperatures in fact rose before the carbon dioxide did:
No, the real problems for the CO2-rescue hypothesis appears when temperature drops again. During almost the entire temperature fall, CO2 only drops slightly. In fact, CO2 stays in the area of maximum CO2 warming effect. So we have temperatures falling all the way down even though CO2 concentrations in these concentrations where supposed to be a very strong upwards driver of temperature.
So although the carbon dioxide levels stayed high after past warming periods, the temperatures nevertheless fell. So clearly the carbon dioxide effect was not the main driver of temperatures in the past, to judge by the ice cores that Al Gore used as proof.
Read Lansner’s succint analysis, neatly illustrated, at the link.
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Kirby’s law
Andrew Bolt
A new book analysing the career of the Left’s favorite judge, High Court Justice Michael Kirby, gives plenty of reason to suspect this is a man who let his political biases overwhelm his duty to administer the law:
By 2007, some 48 per cent of his decisions rendered Kirby in the minority on the court, a rate that increased after 2007. Some might see this as a marker of Kirby’s libertarian stance on certain issues. Others might argue it was the result of occasionally, though not always, being too keen to achieve a particular outcome; perhaps his desire for the goal overwhelmed the brilliance and rigour of research and analysis.
Which seems to me a polite way of saying he made stuff up to suit his agenda. No wonder the Left loved him, little caring that democracy demands that unelected judges administer the people’s laws, not impose their own. And no wonder that this attention seeker left many fellow judges cold
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Rudd writes as Australia burns
Andrew Bolt
With his country sliding into recession, and his $10.4 billion “stimulus” package a flop, Kevin Rudd decided to spend his holidays doing all he could to stop Australians from losing their jobs and their homes:
In a sweeping 8000-word essay in The Monthly on “The Global Financial Crisis”, prepared during his summer holiday, Mr Rudd ... writes that “the time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes...”
The most alarming thing about this is that Rudd thinks the best use of his time in this crisis is to pen a sprawling essay, aimed in large part for a foreign audience, lambasting “neo-liberalism”.
But that’s not all.
Rudd promised to ”end the blame game”. So why this?:
Rudd singles out Thatcherism as a culprit, as well as the former Howard government
In fact, Thatcherism left Britain two decades ago better off - -and hasn’t Britain been run by Labor these past 11 years?
More serious is Rudd’s message:
...the role of the state has once more been recognised as fundamental… ensuring that government is the regulator, that government is the funder or provider of public goods and that government offsets the inevitable inequalities of the market
His agenda is clear, and backed by his deeds. Rudd wants government - not markets - to be “fundamental’. Rudd believes governments should intervene more in the economy. That governments know better.
Is Rudd really is so blind to the lessons of history and economics that he so airly dismisses the case for freeing up markets and limiting the role of government to ensuring they work most efficiently in the interests of the voters? Is he really so arrogant as to overlook the role of politicians and government regulators in creating the sub-prime debacle?
No one is arguing against effective regulation and transparency. But let no one mistake that what Rudd is demanding is far more than that - a return of Big Government.
This may suit Rudd’s craving for power, his desperate need for world attention and his interests in creating a diversion. But a man who’s just blown much of a $10,4 billion stimulus package with little to no good to show for it isn’t in a position to demand yet more power or cash.
Nor, I would have thought, is he in a position to spend an idle few days penning essays.
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A shady offer from the solar carpetbaggers
Andrew Bolt
The Age has launched a crusade for a new solar industry in Australia:
Australia is still missing out on major investments in solar energy.
We are? Sounds like we’ve got a chance to make money here.
Why does Australia remain a straggler in the solar stakes and what do we stand to lose if we don’t catch up?
That’s what I’d like to know, too. How could we turn our back on a nice little earner?
Critics say Treasury remains dominated by free-market devotees who resist the idea of government intervention or playing favourites — as in, giving solar a kick-start in the marketplace.
Hey, wait a minute. I thought the deal was that these “major investments” would flow from solar companies to us, not the other way around. No?
No:
Almost all of the many renewables experts spoken to for this story agree that what is required is intervention in the marketplace to give still-expensive solar electricity a price that makes it competitive. Where this has happened, the industry has flowered. As the industry has grown, the price of solar power has started to plummet, and with it the subsidies initially necessary to allow it to mature.
We have to “give” the “still-expensive” solar companies a price that makes them “competitive”? What kind of economics is that? Or, rather, what kind of word-tricks are being played here? What they want is not a “price” but a “subsidy”. What they offer are not “major investments” but a “big bills”. They why not say so?
And why not, in this long piece of special pleading for the solar industry, tell us what this price - whoa, subsidy - is going to cost us? Hello?
And, please, spare us the jingoism:
Perhaps even more worrying than cloudy Germany showing us up in the solar stakes ...
We should worry that they’re so dumb? We should match their green stupidity? Get away with you.
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Saddam voted out
Andrew Bolt
The fiercely anti-Bush New York Times is excited that women are running in Iraq’s elections this weekend:
Of the estimated 14,400 candidates, close to 4,000 are women.
Yes, the challenges they face are great, as they are in so many heavily patriarchal Arab societies, but finally Iraqi women are getting the chance of a real - not token - say in how their country is run:
While Iraq in the 1950s was the first Arab country to name a female minister and adopt a progressive family law, the leadership aspirations of women were mostly quashed under Mr. Hussein’s macho government.
“Macho” seems a rather bland description of that genocidal tyranny, but let it pass. Let’s comb this NYT feature for a mention of the man who did most to end that tyranny, usher in this democracy, and give these women politicans this chance.
I’ll even help out with a clue. We’re talking about someone who’se name start’s with B-U-S-H. And - bingo! - the NYT reporter does indeed find space to acknowledge such a person:
Her friend Bushra al-Obeidi, a law professor at Baghdad University, ....
I guess Iraqis must simply have voted Saddam out of office.
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Red-hot hypocrites
Andrew Bolt
Add Barack Obama to the list of global warming preachers who demand you make do with less of the stuff they can’t do without.
Here’s what Obama says:
We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.
Here’s what Obama does:
The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
HERE is a local variant, albeit not so manifestly hypocritical, from the green rabble that now runs blacked-out, brown-lawned Victoria.
Here’s what the Government says:
With the extreme hot temperatures it’s important that people are sensible, that they only use air-conditioners and the like when they need to.
Here’s the best the Government will do by way of setting an example:
Mr Brumby said he had told government departments to set their air conditioners at 26 degrees...
Or how about South Australian Premier Mike Rann? The voters are told to turn off their own air-conditioners:
THE State Government says a press release urging people to use alternatives to air conditioning during a 40C-plus heatwave was merely intended to save you money.... Citing our community’s environmental responsibilities, the Government today put out a press release saying there were many alternatives to using air conditioners, urging South Australians to instead insulate ceilings, use external blinds or a pergola to shade windows, and use fans.
But if they’re really hot, Rann will let them use the air-conditioners still blowing on his staff:
PREMIER Mike Rann has invited South Australans into public service office buildings to take advantage of their air-conditioning today.
I bags Rann’s office.
MEANWHILE, Victoria is planning fresh ways to make airconditioners so expensive that only the rich could afford to use them in a heatwave:
Smart-meter trials currently being conducted by retailer Energy Australia put a $2 a kilowatt/hour charge on energy used during days when the network is under pressure.
Under the trial, the charge is applied for a duration of six hours on those days in a move designed to avoid blackouts by getting consumers to switch energy use to off-peak times.
The air-conditioners in most Australian homes average 6.5 watts, meaning the cost of running the unit for those six hottest hours would be about $78 a day.
If your home has ducted air-conditioning, which averages 14.5 watts, then your power bill would hit $174 a day just for running the air-conditioner alone....
Victoria will lead the national roll-out of smart meters with its 2.7 million homes and businesses the first to be equipped with the infrastructure, no later then 2013.
Have they worked out yet how many people their green plans will kill?
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CLIMATE CRISIS: THE EARLY YEARS
Tim Blair
From the New York Times archives, an item dated February 9, 1852:
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NEW ADVICE
Tim Blair
Adelaide reader Stuart received this text message an hour or so ago (from the number 1800022222):
For urgent assistance phone 000. Do not reply to this message. IMPORTANT S.A. GOVERNMENT HEAT HEALTH WARNING: Heat Stress Can Kill; Stay Cool; Stay Inside; Drink plenty of water; Check the safety of vulnerable neighbours; Listen to your radio
“This is an exact replication,” writes Stuart, “complete with weird capitalisation. It seems they forgot to preface it with, ‘Ignore Earlier Government Advice’.”
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CONCERN EXPRESSED
Tim Blair
Associated Press reports:
A crippling winter storm has plunged about a million customers into the dark from the Midwest to the East Coast, and thousands of people in ice-caked Kentucky have sought refuge in motels and shelters.
This report, incidentally, is currently less than one hour old:
Dozens of deaths have been reported and many people are pleading for a faster response to the power outages. Some in rural Kentucky ran short of food and bottled water, and resorted to dipping buckets in a creek …
Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Oh, hello. It’s a Katrina moment for President Obama.
Emergency Management Director Randell Smith … said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.
“We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”
Smith said FEMA was still a no-show days after the storm.
According to the Katrina template, this is all Obama’s fault. Yet Kentucky’s Democrat governor Steve Beshear earlier praised Obama’s swift action … in making a phone call:
“I can’t tell you how appreciative we were,” the governor said. “He not only expressed his concern, but he obviously had the Kentuckians in his thoughts and prayers, and he communicated that to us.”
Imagine the outrage if Bush had “communicated” those thoughts from his comfy thermostat-cranked Oval Office. We live in a time of change!
UPDATE. Maybe the President just doesn’t like white people.
UPDATE II. “I’m one of those Kentuckians without power (going on five days now),” comments Dodd. “I’ve also watched the Obama team’s bumbling, stumblng, Keystone Kops transition and first couple of weeks in office. It’s fine with me if he everyone he ‘supervises’ stay far, far away. We already have enough total incompetents ‘managing’ the problem right here in River City.”
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