Mangled Thoughts

Mr Latham said the key to cheaper fuel was more competition and he advocated new powers for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Under the plan, independent wholesalers and retailers would be able to bargain collectively and changes would be made to the Trade Practices Act.

Predatory pricing would be outlawed and independents would be protected from the market power of big companies.

A view from the Right
Has a quote which sums up Latham’s announcement. from H.L. Mencken and his timeless gem of wisdom:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamourous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

High petrol prices to reiterate have considerably less to do with current problems in the mid east than scare-mongers make out.

Latham is dead wrong on `predatory pricing’. Petrol retailing is highly competeitive, and bound up with it is logistcs and riving down costs tom make it more efficient and bring down prices at which fuel can be sold it. That is clear enough from the pricing of the major retailing chains. It is not about fporcing consumers to pay any business some entitlement. The force of this can be illuminated by a successful but horrid succesful prosecution of a small transport co-operative formed out of the almagation of idividual driver owners : who reduced prices yet made more profit than they could before.

The high court slapped a hefty multi-million dollar fine on them, finding them guilty of imposing a cartel: who was the joker who came up with that charge: Fels and the ACCC and the ACCC is kema sabe.

No true monoply,nor cartel, can exist unless imposed by govt.

In effect, what Latham’s grand design amounts to is announcement, if labour is elected they will begin to impose price controls on anything they decide upon: and the damage will be considerable, should they win: just to prop up some businesses who believe like all socialistos they are entitled to` redistribution’, `welfare’ for selected types of businesses.

Michelle Grattan rattled on; Latham is brilliant tactically, he quickly moves from issue to issue keeping the govt. wrong footed.

Yah, I too wondered what drug she’s taking. Latham and his band of village idiots are clueless on foreign policy, Iraq, economics, fincances, even schooling to whit his great solution to correcting the consequences of sending children to the socialisto indoctrination camps called schools, read a little golden book to your child. TRhge reaosn why Grattan he jumps around, he and each of his colleaguesa re way out of their depths, they’ve hit their upper limites described by the peter prinicple. Some have been elevated far above their abiltity, also definitely true of the Bracks govt. everyone of the snivelling stealing bastards.

As I keep saying the great ALP vision is nothing but national socialism with quite a fascist edge to it and, yet, some of the soviet comintern to it.

News flash, Roche has changed his plea, not guilty, to guilty. Well, snails travel slowly I suppose, or is it a quirk of physics Roche’s brain , having publicly spoken about his part in their Ilsamo-fascist plan to murder and bomb Jews and and their property in Oz, has suddenly twigged, it looks damned silly pleading not guilty to what is before the gaze of all. Perhaps he’s trying to argue , he’s sort of guilty and yet not sort of guilty like the dribbler of the drivel below.

Spiv St. Spiv commie: `well, it’s their property but, in a way the community has a vested interest in it and so owns it a sense.’ He shouldn’t have given up his day job as a hoofer and waitressing job as a union mobster.

Business investment falls27may04

BUSINESS investment slid 2.5 per cent in the first three months of the year, figures show today, the first fall in a year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said new capital spending fell to $13.83 billion in the March quarter, dragged down by investment in equipment, plant and machinery.
But spending remained 3.9 per cent higher than the same time last year, allowing for seasonal influences.
The figures also showed businesses had ramped up their expectations for spending next financial year.

The estimate of $45.1 billion capital expenditure for 2004-05 was 8.2 per cent higher than the last ABS survey, although it was 1.7 per cent weaker than the same estimate for 2003-04.

Point: capital is savings: govt consuption and taxation and regulation and other matters like subsidising sectors, cobine to reduce savings. Taxing profits eliminates more. Wages and salaries are profit participation. And each tier of govt has increased their exactions, some exponentially.

Is this the beginning of that which Brookesnews has pointed out often enough: those actions by govt entail capital is reoded in order to pay for that present burden . In other words, the price of govt’s spending spree is declining investment, with all that that entails for paying jobs , living standards and split of pay between income and savings.

Worth stressing, there is no distinction between profit returns to capital investments and wages and salaries.

In any case ,the Spring St. Spivs are taking Vic into economic recession.

Too early to venture too much and the data, at least as reported is inconclusive, noting the contradictions betwwen statements. This, however, might be the first set of data confirming what sound theory predicts. In that case, bury your money in the garden or,if you have enough to rub together, a Swiss bank account.

Not much solace for the ALP which has been trying to bash the govt over economic recklessness, high taxation and bribery for votes: since their record in the 80’s was far from Prudence’s ways, that the policies they have announced to date amount to even larger absolute increases in govt. consumption .

A reader has furnished some illuminating comments,in response to a post by Tim Blair , in which Emmerich reveals his leftoid beliefs:

Here is the German original, the translation of the excerpt is mine. Do you think he would say this to American audiences?

Q: Will the anti-Bush mood outside of America be conducive to the success of the film?

A: I had no idea that Bush would get up to all the things he did eventually. During the last election campaign I was already writing the script. I hope America comes to its senses. They have been so lied to by the government. For us Europeans this is crystal clear, but also for a few Americans. However there are still 50% of Americans who want to vote for Bush ? this is absolutely inconceivable for me.

Q: The American people do not have the best reputation with regard to ecology. How environmentally conscious are the Americans really?

A: Totally, just not their government. Of course I can only speak for my friends. This may perhaps sound a bit elitist, but most of them drive an electric car. The Americans would approve if those on top would do more for the environment. But they never had a green party in the government which could have had some influence ? in contrast to Germany. There is a great gap: Americans want to recycle. 78% of all people there are worried about the environment. But the government doesn?t see it that way. In the last election, the environmental candidate Al Gore had the consent of the regular voters, and only the electoral college finally changed it. I still think it was a family affair in Florda. There was something fishy about it.

And in a recent interview with the German Spiegel newsmagazine:

“We must not destroy our planet. The United States are the most powerful country, and there sits George W. Bush, a president who cares about nothing but oil. How different would the world be if the Democratic environmentalist politician Al Gore would have come to power? All this is hard to bear for me as a German. I never want to be an American.”

Then he claims his next car will be a hybrid fuel/electric one, but asks: “Why does the industry build the ugliest bodies for hybrid cars? There is method behind it. They want to keep selling their expensive fuel models…”

Another newspaper writes that currently he still drives his “old” BMW.

Posted by: werner at May 28, 2004 at 07:32 AM

As a footnote, it is worth noting, `hybrid cars’ are not only ugly clunking heaps on the outside but also the inside, as Greenie Watch explains:

HYBRID OR MONSTER?

Rude awakening for hybrid dreamers: “Hybrid-electric cars are the flavor of the moment for environmental campaigners. Activists like Arianna Huffington, Larry David and Leonardo DiCaprio urge us all to “break the chain” and drive them. Al Gore, meanwhile, used the previews last week of the scientifically implausible disaster film The Day After Tomorrow to commend them, saying, “I think the new fuel-efficient vehicles represent ethical choices.” Yet there are a few problems with this dream of a hybrid tomorrow. Surveys show that people are highly resistant to them; their owners are starting to realize that they aren’t quite as fuel-efficient as advertised….

Yet even those who already own hybrid electric vehicles are beginning to turn restive. It seems, for instance, that the owners are simply not getting the fuel efficiency they thought they were buying. John DiPietro, a road test editor of the automotive website Edmunds.com, explained in a recent article on wired.com (”Hybrid Mileage Comes Up Short”, May 11, 2004) that hybrid drivers hardly ever experience the actual miles per gallon advertised by the EPA (Brock Yates alerted TCS readers to this issue back in 2002). Most automobiles would have actual miles per gallon performance of approximately 75 to 87 percent of the EPA’s rating. However, data from Consumer Reports’ extensive road tests suggest that the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius averaged well under 60 percent of the EPA’s reported miles per gallon when operating on city streets. The Civic Hybrid was getting only 26 mpg in the city.

Pete Blackshaw was particularly passionate about hybrid technology and greater fuel efficiency when he bought his Honda Civic Hybrid, so much so that he started a blog on the subject. Yet his experiences did not turn out the way he expected, as he encountered the problem of lower-than-expected fuel efficiency coupled with inadequate customer support from Honda. After his blog was publicized on Wired and Slashdot, he was deluged with a wave of advice on how to drive his car:

“Don’t drive fast. Check the tires. Careful on hills. Don’t drive fast. No quick starts. No short trips. Turn off air conditioner. Use cruise control. Don’t drive fast. Don’t use the stereo. Ignore the meter, focus on the actual tank! Read the manual! Wait for 5,000 miles. No speeding. Wait for 10,000 miles. No, 15,000 miles. .

Oz federal govt should take note: `alternative fuel’ is not only uneconomic, it can issue into unemployment, as the article John Ray has lionked explains, with a host of other reasons why it is bad, including: any scheme boosted by Hollywood leftoid hams, Al Gore, and Emmerich, is guaranteed to be rubbish, a fraud, and a great failure, as the hybrid car project has already proven to be.

One further observation to add:

The cost must be greater than that shown by the figure of 75% to 87% of EPA rating, in view of the conversion costs entailed in
turning raw materials into electricity plus the electricity expended
required to charge and recharge batteries? Addtional expenditures, more batteries, other parts, than needed for standard petrol fuel cars. This is someting global warmers and greenies and govts. ignore, like the belief banning plastic bags for shopping is `enviro-friendly’ which dissembles the upshot, increased cost in producing substitutes.

Further, the dessembling points up: greenies, look at the front end only and totallyignore what might be involved in arriving at that. It is deliberate, the greenies are about trying to overthrow free market economies and commerial production and the impostion of their pol potian vision.

The Herald Sun has lauded the Spring St. commie Spivs ten cent palstic shopping bag tax. It is theft , it does nothing but economic damage, just another nasty lying excuse used by liars to steal money.

John Ray’s title,on

Dissecting

, Greens, Poltical

Correctness

, is no exaggeration. His prescient single paragraphs, sometimes extended, like a scalpel cut out the essential offending bit. This take, for example, so obvious in hindsight but someone had to weild the scalpel first:

The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America’s own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map — followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys — an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing — thus inviting more and more attacks.