Headlines Tuesday 28th April 2009

Warning increased as swine flu kills 149
The World Health Organisation has increased its swine flu threat level, warning we're heading towards a pandemic.

Video of Unidentified U.S. Soldier Berating Iraqi Police Is a YouTube Hit
Is the U.S. soldier starring in this popular Youtube video a tough, Patton-esque, tell-'em-like-it-is inspirational leader … or is he an unprofessional jerk? - I have no idea who this person is (Patton?) but he seems to be speaking straight from the Obama play book. Handwashing, no responsibility and blaming others. He needs a teleprompter. -ed


Swan counting on fast economic recovery
Treasurer Wayne Swan is counting on a rapid recovery from recession within two years to get the budget back towards balance, repay the national debt, and cut the unemployment rate.

Wear a face mask in public: expert
It may not look great, but an infectious diseases expert says the best way to protect yourself from swine flu is to wear a face mask in public.

Wayne Cooper the talk of Fashion Week
Australia's rock and roll bad boy of fashion, Wayne Cooper, has shown off a spring/summer collection inspired by strong women like Jerry Hall and Deborah Harry.

Sydney tops in quality of life in Aust
Sydneysiders enjoy Australia's best quality of living, but better conditions can be found across the Tasman, a survey shows.

Unemployment doubles in Syd in 12 months
The number of unemployed people in parts of Sydney has almost doubled in the space of a year, while one in 16 homeowners are defaulting on their mortgages.

Sydney school damaged in suspicious fire
Police are investigating two fires that torched part of an Islamic School and destroyed a smash......

'Dangerous' asbestos in Aboriginal town
Dangerously-high levels of asbestos at a small Aboriginal community south of Sydney is posing a......

Paedohile cultist escapes island jail
A cult leader jailed for sex attacks on children escaped in a helicopter from a prison on the......

Obama plane's photo-op triggers NY panic
New Yorkers evacuated offices in panic on Monday when an unexpected overflight by one of President Barack Obama's Boeing 747s triggered fears of a new 9/11.
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Rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants
Piers Akerman
THE stream of unlawful boat arrivals has shown the Rudd Government’s claim to a “deterrent” factor in its immigration policy is false. - It is appalling how those very media identities who support Rudd seem to manage to insult the average Aussie too. I have lived in Australia since I flew here at age 11 in 1978. Both my parents are Australian born and have never held any other citizenship. I briefly returned to the US for a coast to coast road trip in december 1981 to Jan 82. when I was in year 9.
Yet when I resigned from my job of 16 and a half years in 2007, and reported to centerlink with the hopes of exposing workplace corruption which had resulted in the death of a schoolchild, I was told I wasn’t Australian Citizen and that my parents had no record of birth or citizenship. The resultant delay timed me out of industrial relations court. I had no support from state or federal government despite my record of having been a contributing taxpayer for my working life, and my high school and university achievements.
I note that David Hicks had an extensive support network which the money I gave to Amnesty International Australia was diverted to support against my wishes. I am now mere days from being forced to sell my unit because I have been illegally blacklisted from work by the state government.
I think Piers has written a brilliant article, highlighting the unfair practice which makes the desirable practice of migration to Australia expensive and dangerous. - ed.
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LOG UNWHITTLED
Tim Blair
The Washington Post is busily whittling down the corrections backlog. It’s a big job, and getting bigger. Yet another correction is due for those frantic beltway log-whittlers, courtesy of media writer Howard Kurtz:
I was showing some out-of-town relatives the Lincoln Memorial on Thanksgiving Day 2003 when I got the call that President Bush had shown up in Baghdad.

That ended my vacation day as lots of journalists gave up turkey to report on how the president had served (fake) turkey to the troops …
Add Kurtz’s blunder to the backlog.
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PROFESSOR INVISIBLE
Tim Blair
Killer academic George Zinkhan remains on the loose, possibly headed to Amsterdam:
Federal authorities say a Georgia college professor suspected in the shooting deaths of his wife and two other men outside a community theater has a ticket for a flight to the Netherlands for May 2 and they can’t find his passport.
Police are playing a waiting game. Athens-Clarke County Police Capt. Clarence Holeman:
“Criminals make mistakes. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a Ph.D., an M.D. or whatever.”
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LEADING COMMENTERS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Tim Blair
“Hey, this is a game we can all play,” comments MarkL:
If Flummery claims to be the ‘leading paleontologist on climate change’, and Manne claims to be the ‘leading politics perfesser on climate change’, and the Goracle claims to be ‘the leading has-been politician on climate change’, I bags being the ‘leading beach fisherman on climate change’!!

What do the rest of you want to be?
Excellent question. “Leading slightly messed-up perpetual adolescent on climate change” and “leading grumpy old lady retiree on climate change” are already taken. Meanwhile, Margo’s Maid requests an effect title for our foremost reverse forecaster:
Not only are Flannery’s predictions always wrong, they have an impressive degree of consistency in wrongness. One pronouncement from him just seems to get the gigalitres flowing.

So why doesn’t Flannery have an effect named in his honour? The Flannery Effect is just a bit too drab and non-descriptive, I reckon. What we are looking for is a catchy-phrase that will stick in our minds and thus demonstrate to the world that Australia’s reverse oracles are up there with the very best.
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SHOW’S D’OHVER
Tim Blair
The Simpsons has run on the Ten network since 1991 – but no more:
The Ten network will axe The Simpsons and replace it with news, extending the one-hour 5pm bulletin to 90 minutes.

Insiders confirmed the financially troubled network says it can no longer pay the fee of $25,000 for each episode of the top-rating social satire. Ten says dropping The Simpsons would save it $6 million a year.
This would’ve hurt seven or eight years ago. These days, however …

UPDATE:
Channel 10 has hosed down a report that it will axe The Simpsons and replace it with news, extending the one-hour 5pm bulletin to 90 minutes.

With new episodes recently purchased of the US program, which celebrates 20 years on screen at the end of this year, a Ten spokesperson said this afternoon that reports the program is being thrown off air were incorrect.

“The Simpsons is not cancelled,” the spokesperson said.
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MOLECULES HERDED
Tim Blair
Apparently we have carbon farmers. Australia’s future is secure.
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Swan dreams of slashing the deficit
Andrew Bolt
Hmm. Which to trust - the IMF or Wayne Swan, who thought inflation would be our biggest worry, China would save us, his first stimulus would “create” 75,000 jobs and we could avoid a recession?

WAYNE Swan is banking on a rapid recovery from recession within two years to get the budget back towards balance, repay the national debt and cut the unemployment rate.

The Treasurer has revealed in a letter to his state counterparts that his recovery scenario in the budget will have the economy bouncing back to above-average growth rates, close to 4 per cent, at the end of the recession, as occurred after the 1990-92 and 1981-82 recessions.

This is at odds with the International Monetary Fund’s forecast that recovery will be much slower than in previous recessions...

Reality check:

An early return to a budget surplus was unlikely, (Access Economics director Chris) Richardson said, with the budget likely to still be in deficit of at least $30billion by 2012-13. Access Economics yesterday released its quarterly review of the economy showing the combined commonwealth and state budget deficits were likely to hit $60 billion this year, and still be above $50 billion in 2010-11.

UPDATE

Michael Stutchbury warns that the Rudd Government is helping to put people out of work:

WHAT madness would make it more expensive to hire those Australians traditionally hit twice as hard during recessions? Answer: that provided by the Industrial Relations Commission under instruction from Julia Gillard.

An extra 34,000 teenagers have become unemployed over the past year, lifting teenage joblessness to 141,400 or 16.4 per cent. The prospect it will rise well over 20 per cent underlines last week’s warning from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that rolling back John Howard’s Work Choices will make it harder for young Australians to get a foothold in the job market. This, warns the OECD, risks a “build up of a large pool of youth at risk of becoming long-term unemployed”.

But the danger is greater than the OECD’s Paris-based analysts recognise because they haven’t got their heads around the IRC’s award “modernisation” process ordered by Gillard… The OECD clearly hasn’t looked at the Fast Food Industry Award that the IRC will impose from the start of 2010… (which) imposes a national 25 per cent penalty rate for casuals plus an extra 25 per cent for work on weekday evenings and Saturdays. An extra 75 percent applies on Sundays. Casuals working public holidays will have to be paid a 275percent loading on their normal hourly rate.

UPDATE 2

Now even the Business Council of Australia is starting to worry - too late and still too quietly - at this reckless spending of giveaways, pink batts and school halls that has emptied the coffers:

By the end of 2008 the Government was concentrating new spending on short-term economic stimulus. The focus was on infrastructure projects that were “shovel ready” rather than the long-term national productivity benefits.

This year the boom has turned to recession, money is in short supply and there are growing concerns over the size of the budget deficit… (P)oor planning processes and governance at the state or federal level still allow politically driven project selection that delivers low returns.
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Usury punished again
Andrew Bolt
Weeding out shonks is great, but isn’t this fierce nannying likely to dry up some of the lending we need to stimulate the economy?

MORTGAGE brokers and lenders will face fines or even jail terms if they fail to properly assess if a product is suitable for customers and whether a borrower can repay a loan under tough laws unveiled today. The uniform national law will for the first time cover mortgages, credit cards, pay day lending and other consumer credit products…

Under the laws, defaulting borrowers will be able to sue for damages as a result of being put into loans they cannot repay. Breaches will attract fines of up to $220,000 for individuals and $1.1 million for corporations and jail terms of up to five years.

How did “buyer beware” turn so sharply into “seller tremble”?
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Kissing, goodbye
Andrew Bolt
This getting serious:

FIVE Australians were in isolation last night as the rising death toll from the Mexican swine flu epidemic sent a wave of panic around the world.

And seriouser:

MEXICANS were banned from kissing...
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Teleprompter prompted
Andrew Bolt

It could happen to anyone, but if it had happened to Bush… Bush was mocked as the famously inarticulate president, of course, in part because he did not rely so slavishly on a machine that fed him his lines.

UPDATE

Continuing the series “What if Bush had done this?”:

New Yorkers evacuated offices in panic yesterday when an unexpected overflight by one of President Barack Obama’s Boeing 747s triggered fears of a new 9/11…

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called the manoeuvre a “photo op.”
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Accent detected
Andrew Bolt

How does a “Queensland accent” differ from a conventional retail-mall Australian one?

TOWNSVILLE beauty queen Rachael Finch has been advised to lose her ”Queensland accent” before she contests the Miss Universe final later this year.
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Rudd’s class war will hurt
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd is floating a proposal to sock ”the rich” with even higher taxes - not really to raise the paltry millions he’ll get from those few, but to add some Robin Hood spin to the biggest and most irresponsible spend-up (and tax grab) in our history. No doubt he is also looking for inspiration to his “good friend” Gordon Brown, who has just raised the top tax rate in Britain to 50 per cent.

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber explains just why the new mood to flay the rich could beggar the poor:

The opinion polls have uttered. The country loves the new 50 per cent top rate of income tax. Soak the rich. Smash the bankers. So Government spin doctors are in second heaven…

But ... before you lynch me as a rich b*****d flying a kite for my own cause, let me beg you to believe that I am not. I believe that this new top rate of tax could be the final nail in the coffin of Britain plc…

Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country… I write this article because I fear the inevitable exodus of the talent that can dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in. It is inevitable, given that other countries are bidding for entrepreneurs…

I beg readers not to confuse overpaid bankers with the rest of Britain’s entrepreneurs. The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain’s gale-force waters.

UPDATE

Confirmation and illustration:

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson ... declared (Britain’s) tax hike would “block the next wave of entrepreneurs”.

“In a very mobile world, where talent can move countries easily, we need to ensure we do not put off the business-builders from setting up in the UK,” he told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper…

But entrepreneurs aren’t just talking - they are also walking.

Hugh Osmond, who the Sunday Times describes as a “pubs-to-insurance” entrepreneur, is planning to move to Switzerland. Peter Hargreaves, co-founder of financial services group Hargreaves Lansdown, is off to the Isle of Man or Monaco.

“Why wouldn’t I leave?” Hargreaves told the Sunday Times.

“If I stay I’ll pay half a million more a year in tax. If I leave the country I can save £3 million a year. It’s almost like the Government is offering me a bribe worth £3 million a year to go and live abroad.”
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Surprising bias not detected
Andrew Bolt
Prepare to be shocked and surprised. The problem is far bigger than the couch collective each week on Insiders:

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets (in the US) tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

Actually, the only “surprising” thing about these findings is that the UCLA should think them “surprising”.
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Save the planet! Buy my insurance
Andrew Bolt
Deaths from natural disasters have actually fallen, but what does that matter to a professional alamist? Local global warming preachers are now touting an insurance salesmen warning of insurable disasters as their latest guru:

The Climate Group is delighted to invite you to a discussion with Professor Peter Hoeppe entitled: Preparing for the Storm – Understanding Natural Disaster and Risk in a Changing Climate. Professor Hoeppe is Head of Geo Risks Research at Munich RE and is one of the world’s foremost experts in natural disasters and associated risk. Please find an invitation attached.

Munich RE sells reinsurance. Its scaremongering is attacked here - an attack limply responded to here.

To those companies tempted to send executives to these breakfasts, don’t do your dough. That would be one man-made disaster averted already.
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Save the planet! Destroy the ozone layer
Andrew Bolt
Reader Barrie wonders why on earth we’re trying to fix the ozone hole if that will cause whole cities to drown:

The study by the British Antarctic Survey, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says rather than melting as a result of global warming, Antarctica continues to expand.... But the BAS says increased ice formation can be explained by another environmental concern, the hole in the ozone layer, which is affecting local weather conditions…

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has been under fire for suggesting sea levels could rise by 6m as a result of the melting of the Antarctic ice...
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STEVEN MILLOY: Al Gore Lies to Congress
By Steven Milloy Publisher, JunkScience.com/Author, “Green Hell”
It’s a good thing Al Gore didn’t have to raise his right hand and take an oath to tell the truth before he testified on April 24 to the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee about the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

GreenHellBlog.com first reported that Al Gore lied to the subcommittee about his personal finances during questioning by Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn. It turns out that Gore also lied to Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who had asked Gore about his connections with the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs.

While the connection between Gore and Goldman Sachs that Scalise probably was referring to involves David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management who is the co-founder with Gore of the U.K.-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management, the April 27 issue of Fortune unearths a more appalling connection between Gore and Goldman Sachs.

In mid-2008 — six months after Gore joined the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins as a partner — Kleiner Perkins joined Goldman Sachs in financing a company called Terralliance — an oil exploration firm!

As Fortune reports:

Kleiner’s dirtying its hands in the oil patch was something of a head-scratcher. Back then the firm had recently hired Al Gore as a partner. But money is money, oil was trading for $140 a barrel, and Terralliance was said to have developed software that reduced the risk of drilling dry holes. It looked as if Terralliance could be a moneymaker for Kleiner, which had sunk a total of $65 million into the venture, an extraordinary sum for a VC firm — possibly its biggest single investment ever.

But less than one year later, Terralliance has faired poorly, burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Fortune.

The salient facts, here, are not that one of Kleiner Perkins largest investments went south, but the following:

– Kleiner Perkins and Goldman Sachs had both invested in Terralliance.

– Given that Terralliance was venture capital-funded by Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs and a few others, Kleiner Perkins and Goldman undoubtedly knew that they were essentially financial partners in Terralliance’s success.

– Al Gore joined Kleiner Perkins as a partner well before the firm entered into the Terralliance deal.

– As a Kleiner Perkins partner, Al Gore must have known, if not approved of the Terralliance deal, and that it involved Goldman Sachs. At the very least, under partnership law, such knowledge is legally imputed to him as a partner.

– Kleiner Perkins’ investment in Terralliance was not trivial, but perhaps its largest ever in any enterprise. Gore must have known about it.

Getting back to the April 24 House Energy And Environment Subcommittee hearing, when Rep. Scalise said to Gore,

“… and I know you’ve got interests with Goldman Sachs…”

To which, Gore made facial gestures that implied he had never even heard of Goldman Sachs. Gore then replied,

“No.”

Rep. Scalise continued,

“… well, that’s been reported. If — is that not accurate?”

Gore replied,

“No. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

There you have it. Al Gore flatly denying that he had interests with Goldman Sachs — when, clearly, he did.

The irony is that during Gore’s exchange with Rep. Scalise, he accused the fossil fuel industry of lying to Scalise and the American people for 14 years about the science of global warming. As it turns out, the part of the fossil fuel industry that lied to Rep. Scalise and the American people was none other than Terralliance-investor Al Gore himself.