Mangled Thoughts

The Rudd fortune wasn’t made because the little man’s in brown shorts wife is an entrepreneur. They are professional parasites. Theresa’s $50millions was made by States and Federal Governments ‘employment laws’ and, for good measure, stripping real wealth generators of hundreds of millions per annum per Government and throwing it at “personnel firms”. Government regulation and the right connections made that pair of leftist brats’ massive fortune. The Rudds have been well connected, with Kev having been a No.1. banana bender of a bureaucrat.

Otherwise, Kevin Rudd is a buffoon but a dangerous one. There is one principle he holds to, power for himself. Thanks to the clowns and wreckers the Right, that buffoon is Prime Minister, backed by a cabinet of hot red leftists, and central planners. Thanks to the Right, Australians can now look forward to economic ruination and being taken by Rudd into dangerous waters overseas. I’ve said this before, and will say it again; Rudd and his cabinet of “brown shorts” will most likely land Australians into boiling seas.

The best diplomats are not governments and bureaucrats and politicians, they are entrepreneurs engaged in free market activity. I had an interesting conversation a number of years ago with one of the chiefs of a major corporation. He was responsible for major investments in a number of other countries. The conversation touched on certain matters and, accordingly, out of interest, I asked him: “If it were possible, which would you prefer, to run in countries without the govt’s department of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and other agencies or with them involved?” He replied:

“We wish they would stick clear, and we avoid them to the extent we can. They succeed in stuffing things up, and creating tensions that did not exist. It’s awkward at times, but we have to work and co-operate with our overseas counterparts. We engage people in other countries. We deliver to them many benefits, capital, jobs, and products. We, obviously, have opened up good exchange between Australians and their peoples.”

He made plain they also manoeuvre to avoid the interference of parasites in other countries too, noting the propensity of politicians in those countries to blight the lives of those whom they work with and their customers in general. Yet, we have a shocking demonstration of the point right on our doorstep. From Gough Whitlam, through to the Howard cabinet, and now to Rudd, politicians and bureaucrats have thoroughly ruined Papaue New Guinea.

Gentlemen I’m acquainted with have either closed down factories, or killed plans to build new, large-scale factories. They didn’t wish to, and they felt miserable because they are fond of the people they worked with, those who worked for them, and their families. What Australian politicians and bureaucrats have done is to smash the Papuan New Guineans into the ground, and reduce them to mendicancy, ably abetted by Oz cretinous judges, as in the case of BHP operations. Oz politicians have done an excellent job in reproducing themselves. Papuan New Guinea politicians and bureaucrats are worthy inbred cousins.

Ah, there is that dumbkopf, Hatfield-Dodds rabbiting on about economic growth is a determined given. He can explain how Oz politicians have reduced many of our near neighbours to misery and worse. This is besides the recessions and depressions Oz politicians and bureaucrats have bestowed many times on Australians, because of their statist propensities and stupidity – borne of economic ignorance – ah, Hatfield-Dodds is well qualified to consult Cabinets. Hmm, Treasurer Wayne Swann explained, the Papaun New Guineans are only bloody natives and enjoy being kept in squalor by mendacious politicians.

Coming from one of the Corporation’s top men, that is a very damning statement on the ‘foreign affairs’ antics of government and bureaucrats. His statement confirmed my intuitions but it was most interesting to hear a heavyweight entrepreneur sum up the real diplomats of the world versus the proverbial bull in a china shop called government.

Within a few short months Rudd and his professional corrupter of youth, Peter Garrett have used gunboat diplomacy against the Japanese over whaling, as they licked Pekingese boots. How much damage have they done toward Japan? This morning, headlines screamed Canberra’s bureaucrat’s in FO are bumbling around in a panic trying to work out how to repair the damage.

The Japanese friends of the real diplomats won’t, of course, blame their Australian friends. They realise the nastiness is all from the Right’s 2nd degree cousins, Rudd and his circus troupe. Even so, it is conceivable Rudd and Co can worsen relations. Any genuine real Liberal, to be presumptuous, would be disgusted by the antics of Rudd and the “brown shorts”.

Over the Easter break, a news report delivered a high voltage shock. It was Rudd’s declaration that he will swing Australia’s “middle power” weight around the international stage. The bull has decided to run into a large number of China shops. Not satisfied with threatening to demolish real diplomacy, dissatisfied with this promising criminal development, he has in the last few days announced he will bond Australia even tighter to the UN.

Rudd has all the virtues of a good dictator - worship of nature, power hungry, and vain. Vanity propelled the Germans to inflame the world twice. Here is little Rudd wielding incendiaries. Someone find him a tin hat with a pretty spike on top, and ram it somewhere unmentionable.

He wants a seat on the “UN Security Council”. The immediate reaction was, “Oh, this means he is about to steal a few more squillions out of real taxpayers”. Well, he was honest on this, for the next day he came out and said, “A seat on the UN won’t come cheap…”Of, course, if he wants the ‘seat’ so badly, he can take up the Rudd Family’s $50millions and buy it himself.

It cannot be ignored, the UN parasites do have world dictator ambitions and the likes of Rudd are just the types to help them to it. This is aside from, the UN’s funding of Islamo terrorists and ‘schools’ which brain wash Arabs into Islamo fascism and terrorism, with martyrdom the highest career ambition, and destruction of the West and Israel very noble aims instilled into children. Then there is the rotten, savage record of the UN in other countries. The best policy is to do what the US nearly did, pull the plug on the UN.

Let the UN scream, stamp their feet, so what. They deserve worse. What really disturbs the UN, however, is fear that countries will wake up and cut the fund pipes which run from hard pressed real taxpayers straight into the bank vaults of the parasites who stuff the UN. But no, stupid Kevin Rudd is going to plunder Australians for untold hundreds of millions of dollars per annum so that he can play at being Grand World Pooh Bah. This is the ‘man’ the Right flung into Office.

Playing international brinkmanship, binding Australia even more tightly to the UN heightens dangers. It is stark naked the UN has fomented real strife around the world, bringing large scale death and destruction, and dragging Westerners into the maelstroms the UN foments and then fans.

Rudd and his Cabinet of Brown shirts will inflict great pain on Australians. He is a dangerous buffoon. He is the Right’s close cousin, 2nd degree. It shows; he is a congenital idiot too. Congenital idiots are very nasty, little juvenile delinquents. Face it readers, while the Right desire ‘power too’, they nonetheless cling to their Leftists cousins, because they need each other. Without each other, the gravy train of ‘government’ crashes into a brick wall.

The real diplomats will find their ‘irritation’ increased. Thanks to the Right, through Rudd, they will be forced to wear a ‘cooling’ of relations. That is my assessment - Rudd will deliver unpleasant surprises and each one will detonate in all the wrong places.

My assessment of Rudd was formed while he was on the Opposition benches. He is rapidly confirming that assessment.

Update: sound-byte of Rudd addressing UN; “harmony”, “complementarity”. He is a moron. His speech is littered with expressions fascists of the 20th century used , including FDR.

I was shocked to learn Alexander Downer tried to convince Howard to buy him a seat on the UN “Security Council”. Downer blithely ignored the Department of Foreign Affairs, under his watch, was funnelling taxpayers money into the UN’s program of brainwashing Arab children into Islamo-fascism and terrorism. I once formed a good assessment of Downer as Cabinet Minister. Since the election defeat, he has shown me totally wrong. He is Adelaide Brahman through and through. He would have been a complete disaster if he had managed to become Prime Minister.

Oh, and the Peking Olympic Games: the usual buffoons have described it as opening China up to the world, and bringing people together. Rubbish on both counts.

China has been opened up by the real diplomats. The internet has aided this by, of course, swift, real time communications.

The Games are a Statist indulgence, which comes at the expense of investment, to the burden of those forced to pay for “Romaneconomics”.

But, I see what the socialistos mean: real liberty and exchange is evil, for that means millions of people voluntarily, happily doing things statists can never accomplish. And the truth hurts statists : free markets, economic freedom is the great falsification of the lie, Govt. is the precondition of civilisation. It is a lie charlatans called sociologists purvey. It is completely false.

Statists regard inidviduals with contempt. Only the collective lumpenmasse counts for them. This is why the Right and the Left have reduced schooling to an exercise in turning out good little serfs, matched by ‘dumbing down’ and brainwashing children in such mysteries as the beliefs of the Greens. Hell, what Rightwing or Leftist politician worth his salt wishes to face voters who won’t brook being taxed into pauperism and having their real rights and liberty overthrown by capricious, blood sucking parasites?

To reinforce this, here is Jeff “Ethanol” Kennett:

Kennett’s snake-oil economics,’green gas’ and ‘corruption’ in “Continued” below.

I was completely wrong about Kennett. He’s just another Rightwing Statist, who also happens to advocate euthansia. Well, I can see why. Having worked the serfs to death, Leftist and Rightist Cabinets don’t enjoy the unsightly spectacle of heaps of the worn out littering their private ‘national forests’ and begging in the streets. Much better to bump them off and bury the evidence.

Kennett’s snake-oil economics,’green gas’ and ‘corruption’

Kennett’s snake-oil economics,
‘green gas’ and ‘corruption’
By Gerard Jackson
12-18 January 1998

Under Premier Kennett’s leadership the Victorian State Liberal (conservative to US readers) Government has become increasingly interventionist to the extent that even the Labour Party is now looking on it with some (though secret) admiration. Run by economic illiterates (they prefer to call themselves “practical men”) the Government is now preparing to implement a disastrous piece of Peronist planning in the shape of subsidies for the production of ethanol (ethyl alcohol).

Egged on by the ignorant interventionist ‘journalists’ who run the Herald Sun, pressured by farmers seeking handouts, bamboozled by academics looking for another gravy train, and smooth-talked by corporate investors who know a sucker when they see one our meddling politicians have been persuaded that these snake-oil remedies will help the environment, create jobs, generate more incomes and promote economic growth. All of this is complete bilge. But what can one expect from a mob that thinks car racing and casinos promotegrowth.

In defence of its economic stupidity, Pat ‘Peron’ McNamara, Deputy Premier and Agriculture Minister, asserted that tax-breaks (code for subsidies) would boost farm incomes and cut greenhouse gases. Giving mindless ‘journalists’ his vision of the “Great Leap Forward”, McNamara
enthusiastically claimed that “We could set up small plants in every reasonably sized town across the Wimmera-Mallee”.

But why “reasonably sized towns”? Why not go the whole hog and set them up in every backyard? The employment possibilities are staggering - as would be the subsidies. Of
course, the vision also requires the state to make the use of ethanol compulsory. (Funny how sweeping interventionist visions need compulsion).

Swept along by the awesome possibilities of turning Victoria into an ethanol sheikdom, McNamara tried, as does every interventionist, to justify the necessity for tax privileges and subsidies for favoured producers by claiming that the benefits will definitely exceed the costs. We were told, for example, that US annual subsidies and tax breaks of about $A900 million
to the ethanol lobby were reaping the States huge gains. All of these claims are pure bunkum.

The reason that the market place has rejected ethanol is because it is not only more expensive than petrol it is also grossly inferior in terms of its energy input-output ratio. (The ratio of the amount of energy needed to produce it to its energy output). The US Department of Energy found that the net energy loss from producing the corn and then fermenting it was 3.1 million BTUs per ton of corn. (Brazilians get a net energy gain from their ethanol because it is fermented from a jungle-like cane plant that has a low-energy input.)

Professor P. J. Reilly calculated that one bushel of corn produces 2.6 gallons of ethanol at an energy cost of 375,000 BTUs. However, the 2.6 gallons only yield 218,000 BTUs of which only 43,600 actually do any useful work when substituted for petrol. This amounts to an energy loss of about 89 per cent. In other words, ethanol contains less energy than the oil and other energy inputs needed to produce it. Meaning that from an energy accounting angle the processing ethanol from grain is a dead loss. (And McNamara has got the gall to call this pork barrel scheme an energy saver). To bring about a positive energy balance energy inputs would obviously have to be significantly reduced. Perhaps McNamara will tell Victorian taxpayers how he proposes to do it. Legislation, maybe?

It is because of its gross inefficiencies that it requires subsidies. Now let us be absolutely clear what this means. The market tends to allocate factors of production to the margin, i.e., the most productive use. Using prices as signals, business tries to combine factors in a way that
minimise costs and maximise productivity. The use of subsidies distorts this process by misdirecting capital into production processes that now expand output beyond an economically justifiable level. In particularly bad cases it finances ‘investments’ whose existence are not economically justified by market conditions because there is insufficient demand for their
products. This subsidy process bids capital goods away from their more valued uses thus keeping productivity and income lower than they would otherwise be. (Insome countries, this process has actually devastated living standards).

This means that some firms will be forced into adopting more costly less efficient factor combinations; other firms may have to severely curtail planned output; some might have to close down while others may not come into existence at all because subsidies have denied them access to capital. When subsidies are reduced or withdrawn these government created
malinvestments either collapse or contract. Pressure is then put on governments to restore
if not increase the income draining subsidies. This has already happened with Manildra and BoGas, ethanol-producing companies, who are demanding that their subsidies be restored. In short, subsidies waste scarce resources,lower welfare, distort investment decision-making and corrupt the political process. Needless to say, subsidies also mean higher taxes, something McNamara neglected to mention. What this will do for our already heavily taxed state I’ll leav to Benito Kennett and Peron McNamara to explain, as if they can.

Now The Herald Sun (a well-known interventionist rag noted for its economic illiteracy and intellectual cowardice) reported the American Coalition for Ethanol as claiming that “each $US1 of up-stream and on-farm economic activity generates $3.20 in downstream economic stimulus due to ethanol processing. . . .” This is the kind of phony economic reasoning that Premier
Kennett uses to justify subsidising Formula One racing. That subsidies generate the economic activity that the ethanol lobby is extolling is why economists oppose them. All of this expenditure has been misdirected from more productive uses where the value of the output would have been greater. If it were otherwise, the economic value of ethanol production would more than cover its costs and the ethanol lobby would not have to demand subsidies to survive. But I fear this kind of reasoning is beyond the understanding of the likes of Kennett and McNamara as well as the editor of the Herald Sun.

Economic illiterates who write for The Herald Sun, especially the editor, have taken it upon themselves to promote the interests of the ethanol lobby, with misinformation as their main weapon, by pressuring the state government into raiding the public purse on behalf of ethanol producers. Graeme Neill, the paper’s ’science’ reporter is typical example of what is wrong with
that paper. In one of his items on ethanol (28/12/97) he gave, as intended, the impression that ethanol production in Brazil and the US is an economic success story. The facts, however, tell another tale. (Is that why he left them out?) Take Brazil first.

It was estimated that in the 1980s that once all the costs of production and subsidies were properly accounted for it was found that her sugar-based ethanol was three times the price of crude oil. Faced with the dire economic consequences of its ethanol-subsidy policy the Brazilians have been trying for sometime to wind it back.

In 1990 the US federal subsidy to gasohol (an ethanol-petrol mixture) users at the pump was US60 cents a gallon. Of course, if large-scale ethanol production was undertaken then grain prices would have to rise. Correctly interpreting such a price rise as an indirect subsidy to ethanol producers, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimated that once
ethanol production exceeded 2-4 billion gallons a year the subsidy would rise to between $US4 to $US5 per gallon.

The OTA also pointed out that at that level of production more oil and gas could be used up in the production of ethanol than would be saved by its use. Just how damaging large-scale ethanol production can be to agricultural production was brought home by a US announcement in the 1970s to produce 10 billion gallons of ethanol, mainly from corn, by 1990. If the pogramme had been implemented it would have consumed about 25 per cent of the nation’s grain production in 1990. Imagine what that would have done to the price of food in general and the international price of wheat in particular.

‘Journalists’ at The Herald Sun casually write as if a fuel mixture of 10 per cent ethanol to 90 per cent petrol, or even 15 or 85 per cent ethanol to petrol, is a costless exercise. (Perhaps that is because they cannot think). The Economist (7/1/89) claimed that even if genetically engineered bacteria could raise the conversion efficiency it would need 500 million acres of
arable land, 105 per cent of the arable land in the US, to meet 10 per cent of the country’s fuel needs. But Neill tells us that Lynn Osburn, a so-called American energy expert, had calculated that if 6 per cent of the arable land in the US were planted with hemp it could satisfy the
country’s total demand for oil and gas.

Only 6 per cent? Let us apply a little rough and ready arithmetic to this figure. As we have seen, the US has about 500 million acres of arable land. If it takes 500 million acres to produce enough ethanol to meet 10 per cent of the nation’s fuel needs, it would take 5000 million to meet all of its fuel needs; an area only about the size of 3 Australia’s.

However,according to Osburn, hemp plantations occupying a mere 30 million acres could do
the job. This means that one acre of hemp would produce about 16,700 per cent more ethanol than an acre of corn. In other words, she is claiming, if correctly reported by Neill, that an acre of ethanol-producing hemp is nearly 167 times more productive than an acre of ethanol-producing corn.

Osburn’s calculations are even more absurd than the above figures suggest. A bushel equals eight gallons which equals 30.28 litres (like Osburn, I shall use American gallons). Therefore, even if it were possible to convert a bushel of corn into 8 gallons of ethanol, it would still need 1.6 billion acreas of arable land, more than 3 times the amount of arable land in the US. If an acre of hemp is 167 times more productive than corn we find, using Professor Reilley’s figures and assuming each acre yields an equal number of bushels, that the hemp equivalent of a bushel of corn produces about 1644 litres. This is the same as saying that she can get 1644 litres out of a 30 litre tank. (Now that’s what I call a magic pudding).

Let us be more realistic, though still generous, and assume that she can extract 19 litres (about 5 gallons) from her ‘bushel’, her acre would still have to be 8000 to 10,000 per cent more productive than an acre of corn. On average a Victorian acre of wheat yields about one tonne of grain while on average an acre of hemp yields about 8.5 tonnes, including the stem and
flowers. A difference of 750 per cent; far below what is necessary.

For fear of labouring what is now obvious, it is perfectly clear that no matter how we massage the figures, they just do not add up. Even though my figures are extremely rough, they do demonstrate how absurd Osburn’s reported claim really is. Moreover, producing ethanol from hemp is a more complex and costly process than producing it from grain. This means bigger subsidies and an even worse energy balance.

Nevertheless, despite all the evidence, the Herald Sun pompously declared that “agricultural science is giving the mining industry a lesson in producing cheap, friendly fuel for the family car”. Osburn’s claim reminds me of Amory Lovins’, another green genius, energy calculations for the American chemical industry. Using figures from the beer and wine industry he claimed that a comparatively small chemical industry could produce enough ethanol to satisfy a third of the country’s petrol demand. What this phony energy expert and his mindless media allies overlooked is that the water content inflated his figure by a mere 2000 per cent. Yet on the basis of this kind of junk science the State Government intends to impose huge economic costs on the Victorian community).

The American situation makes clear the corruptive effect of these subsidies. What Murray Johnson’s article pushing ethanol (The Herald Sun, 28/12/97) did not reveal is that Americans have been compelled by law to use gasohol. US corn farmers poured millions of dollars into a campaign to mandate the use of ethanol; Archer-Daniel-Midland which supplies about 70 per cent of the ethanol market poured in at least $US1 million. But their millions were chickenfeed compared with the billions in subsidies they got, part of which was returned to certain politicians in the form of donations (Most of us would call this bribery).

We are now witnessing the beginnings of an equally corrupt campaign in Victoria. That it should be supported by one of the state’s leading paper’s is an absolute disgrace, demonstrating the clear collapse of journalistic values. That the Libs should welcome such a campaign comes as no surprise to those of us who are painfully aware of the Victorian Party’s loathing for reasoned debate, especially in the field of economics, and its contempt for the normal proprieties of government. This was made abundantly clear by ‘Peron’ McNamara’s idiotic and dictatorial assertion that Victorians should be compelled by law to use ethanol to make its production profitable (Herald Sun, 28/12/97).

Now we have it, McNamara and the crew are prepared to use political coercion against the electorate to make these outrageous pork barrel projects profitable. So much for democracy and clean government.

A free market would not waste energy or tolerate the kind of corrupt shenanigans our present crop of politicians are getting up to. In a free market people would not waste resources by pouring them into projects the value of whose product is less than the value of the resources they consume. A free market would allocate capital goods to where they produced the greatest value for consumers thus raising output and living standards.

A corrupt-free government would not line the pockets of supporters and rent-seeking businessmen with taxpayers’ money, some of which ends up as Party donations; it would not abuse its power by favouring some producers over others; it would not tolerate its citizens being exploited nor would it exploit them nor would it threaten to violate their rights as McNamara has done.

It should now be clear that the Victorian government has failed the democratic test and that he likes of Kennett and McNamera are not fit to hold public office.Unfortunately, the Labour Party alternative is even worse. God help us.

A question of journalistic ethics

The one question we should ask is why ‘journalists’ report green
nonsense as if it were scientific fact instead of junk science. Perhaps Graeme Neill provides a clue. Neill frequently writes about the menace of ‘global warming’. What he does not say is that there is no global warming. Satellite and balloon temperature measurements taken since 1978 actually suggest a slight cooling. Yet Neill has never, to my knowledge, reported this fact. (This is the same man who called Stephen Schneider an “eminent scientist”).

His articles convey the impression that there is scientific consensus on so-called global warming when there is none. Something else he did not report. The truth, once again unreported, is that the majority of climatologists do not believe in human-induced global warming. Moreover, many scientists are coming to the conclusion that there is no warming at all. But Neill only seems to quote scientists who predict global disaster. Why? Is it because of an ideological prejudice that Neill has not reported on the work of genuinely eminent scientists like Pat Michaels, one of the world’s leading climatologists and the scientist who showed the absence of global warming?
See ‘Global warming’ propaganda and journalistic dishonesty in our archives.

We find exactly the same situation on The Australian. In one particularly deplorable incident John MacLeay, one of its ‘journalists’, claimed that there existed silicon wafers that could produce a staggering 425 watts from a 2.5 centimetre solar panel (The Australian 24/10/96). I say staggering because the maximum amount of solar energy striking the Earth is 0.1 watt
per square centimetre per hour. He was only out by a factor of 1700. Yet The Australian refused to correct the figure, just as the Herald Sun has refused to correct false figures it has published. How can the public be expected to make informed decisions if even the media deceives it?

Two things are becoming crystal clear: not only can the media no longer be trusted to tell the truth but the ideology of many ‘journalists’ has now made them a danger to democracy.