Mangled Thoughts

The Left have run the falsehood the recession is due to free markets. Rudd relishes in a moralistic reformulation of economic action through the offshoot of Marxism, ’social democracy’. Not that Rudd is an ideologue. He is thick he genuinely does not have a clue as to what he is gassing on about. To spell it out, in much of what Rudd and his Cabinet are doing, Mussolini got in first. The trouble is, Rudd is in Office for the same reason Bracks, Brumby and Anna Bligh have won successive elections, the closed gene pool that has all but destroyed the Liberal Party, the Right.

The public debates and fights that should have occurred in the past have never been mounted, because the Right have suppressed new talent in the Liberal Party, appointed as Parliamentary advisers lazy illiterates, and have been entrenched by their pets the CIS, IPA, and blundering clowns in the media such as Albrechtesen, Bolt, and Blair. Together this lot not only got the case for free labour markets completely wrong, they ensured Cabinet did not receive the advice needed, and the public never apprised the true case as to way they are good for all.

While the likes of Des Moore, Ray Evans, Senator Minchin, and Michael Kroger ensured sound advice never reached Cabinet (these shallow mediocrities cannot to admit they are wrong - it means giving way to superior men), $3000+ a week man Bolt told Australians on modest pay they are ingrates for not realising they are as wealthy as he is. Albrechtsen’s put in a special contribution by sneering at ACTU guns and smearing at couple of them. Through all this, they asserted as true all the fallacies the ACTU relied on to defeat reform of labour markets. Between them and Hugh Morgan smiling into the camera that, he believed, loved him (ABC in 2005), they destroyed the campaign (the true case can’t be destroyed) and blew HMAS Liberal Party to smithereens.

Likewise, the fight against Greens lies and the corresponding anti-economic policies. “Watermelon reds’ in the Liberal Party, three of them former Ministers for the cult of environmentalism, Campbell, Kemp, and Turnbull, compounded the damage. As in economics, the Right and their clunker tanks suppressed, steafastly did not use those who were fighting from within the solid bastion of sciencem. They could have been weilded with great impact in public forums, from major media outlets, to direct debate with boosters of greens lies and this is what is most needed in Australia - as on other grave matters.  In contrast, the diseased Left are swift to use talent. The result is, on the scientific front, the fight is now a desperate battle, since Rudd’s carbon tax is to be imposed mid 2010.

The position on the economic front has been worse all along, as the above summation of the Right’s wrecking of the labour market fight indicates. It’s not simply that the economics commentariat in the media are, to say the least, deficient. With only the Right’s clunker tanks, IPA and CIS, and their pet journalists, it has been a right disaster. Though, to be sure, The IPA’s and CIS’ claim to be leading free market think tanks is a lie, reflected in the abysmal poison they pump out.

On the other hand, Greg Lindsay has come clean and ceased pretending his superannuation fund the CIS is a free market think tank. They are in there serving their pals who hope to become wealthier through carbon taxes. What disturbs Lindsay is that I have fingered the truth. It also disturbs him genuine Liberals who donate to the CIS are beginning to appreciate the treachery. What those donors should appreciate is, the IPA are also intellectual frauds, and is still at it destroying the fight against what will be a devestating tax.

There is an exception at the IPA, Alan Moran. Moran has written some articles in which he came as close as he dared to admitting what he well knows, Jackson is absolutely correct on the economic case against carbon taxes. Then, the IPA is the Kemp family slush fund and play pen for Andy Pandy Kemp, his pal Chris Berg, and they have been joined by, surprise by surprise, William Morgan, Hugh Morgan’s son. Hugh Morgan, with his pal and a few other thuggish buffoons hope to collect an extra few billions on the back of destruction of efficient coal based energy companies, through their ‘nuclear powr company’ that will have to be subsidised by a large factor ( this is Walker’s and Morgan’s notion of entrepreneurship).

We had the Berg-Professor Sinclair Davidson paper on manufacturing calling for ‘industry policy, and in which they also conceded the Greens lies and policies. It occurred to me on reading it when it was published, are they pointing to a ‘nuclear power plant’. Anyway, Davidson is still to make good on his claim the inverse of the J curve is not true (it is true); the clock is still ticking Davidson.

Now the IPA has published another position paper that is also destructive mush:

Tim Wilson,  Australia’s delinked and non-compliant emissions trading scheme,  (PDF format, March 2009).

Criticisms:

Wilson demonstrates the undergraduate, textbook feebleness of the Right. He argues from perfect competition. Perfect competition is a myth. To say the least, therefore, it has nothing to do with genuine free markets.

The myth is the sole grounds for the falsehood of market failure. In so far as there is ‘market failure’ it is all due to capital destroying governments and central banks and their lousy monetary expansion and never due to free markets.  The dangerous fiction is the case for regulation, which strangles investment and entrepreneurship. This fiction the Right and their clunker tanks do not merely concde, they believe it is free market economics.

The above is crucial, because Wilson asserts an ETS would work in a perfect maret:

“in a perfectly competitive market, permits will flow towards their highest valued use. Those that receive lower value from using the permits have an incentive to trade them to someone who would value them more”.7

However, he continues, since the pertinent markets are imperfect, they can be ironed out by ’sound’ regulation:

Bowen lays out the conditions for, an efficient and effective global emissions trading market as:

 • Having efficient rules and administrative arrangements (including monitoring, enforcement and penalties).

There is the crucial point, in the overall cause of free market cause. The IPA and the CIS have not defended it for over three decades/t. They have been party to destroying free markets because perfect competition is not only a myth, it is, as orthodoxy as it were, also an assualt on free markets. The major effort of the IPA and CIS over decades reflects this, working out how to regulate markets. These clowns are not intellectually equipped to fight the Left.

Wilson asserts

Trading schemes allow those required to buy carbon permits to assess their mitigation options by investing in new technology, changing their inputs, modifying outputs, reducing production, and so on, against the cost of buying a carbon permit…

Greg Lindsay asserted carbon taxes would make alternative technology economic. It is a false claim. This is given in the tax is against any capital that is a criminal offence under carbon taxation. What carbon taxation is, is an assault on specific capital combinations, such as a coal based energy plant. But, carbon taxes are wider in impact and on two counts:

1. all firms require economically produced energy; it is a major input cost for many. Manufacturing firms are being wiped out overseas because of this impact.

2. It might be theoretically true a tax is directed at a specific combination but it is not necessarily true. The tax can hit other capital combinations, hit them immediately too.

Next:

Carbon markets operate essentially the same as a normal financial market. The value of a financial product is diminished the more are issued, or the credibility of the equity to underwrite the financial product is uncertain. If a carbon permit is traded at a certain price it is essential that “the value of the credit will be maintained”.

This sounds dangerously like the ‘dual economy’ falsehood - ‘a real economy’ -production, and the financial market paper ‘economy’. Financial markets and capital are one. The second is impossible without the former, which is the generator of capital formation and allocation. As for the value of, say, shares, that is decided by the expected future earnings of the investment in a firm. ETS ‘credits’ have no value at all, rather well brought out by the fact ETS is a capital destroying tax.

 ETS is not generated by free markets, nor are they similar to them, nor can they be rendered the same. It is an attack on financial markets, as an attack on capital. Greg Lindsay also asserted the lie carbon taxes can be raised as market instruments. Both Lindsay deliberately refused to admit the destructive force of carbon credits on firms in Europe. We know what Lindsay’s motivation is, so what is Wilson’s excuse!

I’ll leave off the examination of the IPA paper for now, and resume it in another item. Yet, the above already is damning, drawing out again why the Right have betrayed the Liberal Party and Australians. It is a deadly fight against a highly destructive tax and what do the IPA and CIS do but sell Australians out by causing great damage to this grave cause.

It is worse than incompetence, keeping in view the CIS and IPA have also advised Liberal Party Cabinets, Federal and States. As for the public fight, they secure the field for diseased Greens, Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong. While they busily wreck and betray another grave cause, they smear any genuine Liberal who can fight such causes. The notion this lot are defending the free market cause must be their in-house joke. I wish it were a good laugh too.

Campell, Turnbull, and David Kemp used to froth at the mouth against anyone who dared question their belief in the Greens’ lie. So do Rudd and Wong today.

Some more good news, from science:

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’  [Uk Telegraph, 31/3/09]

Just one more mountain in the Himalayas of science against the Greens lie, co2 emissions causes climate change. Never forget, the original claim, which was very rubbery and closed, was they cause global warming. When the claim was thoroughly destroyed, the liars boosters didn’t merely shift the goal posts, they latched onto ‘climate change’, in the hope that it is rubbier and the circular proposition cemented shut. It’s been blown into itty bitty particles.

It was never about science. The fraud was politically driven from the start.  The disgusting aspect to it is the Right who have wrecked the Liberal Party helped advance the lies - 3 former Ministers in particular:

Ian Campbell, David Kemp, and Turnbull,(who now has Greg Hunt as the “Opposition’s” Guru for the cult of diseased Greens. Kemp had the hide to claim he was grinding the Greens into the dust. He did not. He served the Greens by imposing policies they demanded. He has never with the rest of the Rightwing clique apologised to the members of the Liberal Party (not that there are many genuine Liberal members in the Victorian Division anymore to apologise to) and to Australians.

The Greens’ lie boils down to nothing more than a belief in magic, man can make the universe jump, bound into an animistic ontology. A downright savage belief but this is the excuse Right and Left in the major parties have latched on to, in order to ‘justify’ measures that approach overtly totalitarian coercion and mean the devestation of Australians.

It would be nice to put it down to simply, they have no science and so no brains, but this would belie the political aims of the bastards. In the case of the Right, though, unlike the Left’s addiction to the cult of socialism, the Right’s aims are defined by their navels.

It is impossible to exaggerate the devestation carbon taxes will wreak upon Australians. There is another consideration, the Armed Forces of Australia, forget about them, there won’t be any and as it is, things are bad enough:

The origins of what is falsely called Government is warfare. This is the primary duty of Ministers. This headline comes as no suprise:

Australia’s defence inadequate

Australia would reportedly be unable to deploy fighter jets, warships and tanks at short notice because much of its most powerful weaponry is awaiting upgrades.

News Limited has reported billions of dollars of the Australian Defence Force’s equipment is only of use for training purposes, or for deployment on operations where there is little or no risk of high-level conflict.

While the ADF receives $22 billion in taxpayer funds each year, the majority of its 71 F/A-18 Hornet fighters cannot be used against modern air defences because they lack sufficient electronic protection.

The fighting men of the Armed Forces are abused badly, and because the politicians, their advisers and bureaucrats know they are professionals.

Consider: Beazely as Minister of Defence purchased that steel coffin the Kockums “Kockup” submarine, instead of buying off the shelf the best available an American  nuclear submarine. Now that this expensive piece of treachery is to be replaced, will Cabinet do the right thing?

Then there were Right-wing ministers in the Howard Cabinet, as I exclusively reported on, who instead of buying the latest version of the Abram Battle Tank, purchased a very early model Some readers will recollect one of many major problems:

The cupola of the tank is very large. When it is rotated forward of 45 degrees the driver cannot escape through the driver’s hatch. Tanks are highly volatile. Unlike in war movies, a tank that is hit blows up spectacularly, they burn. The driver has no chance to get out of the early model tank those Ministers bought. To avoid a horrible death the driver’s escape hatch is to shoot himself.

The latest model has all the problems ironed out, not that the Abram is an automatic choice. One former cavalry officer also mentioned the German tank. The point is, as in the case of submarines and every weapon and bit of equipment, the lives of brave men are at stake.

Yet, to support the Armed Forces soundly requires Australians to be economically prosperous and this means savings and its accumulation. Instead, Local Councils, State Governments, and the Federal Governments are consuming savings taken from Australians. In the Federal annual budget, Rudd and Swann have followed Costello, increased consumption, but with a difference, they have planned to cut the defence budget. Then there is the $52 spending spree, which with increased regulations extinguishes savings. Yet, as bad as all this, this is nothing to what the impact of carbon taxes will be.

Reader’s should also be clear on this, it is not only treacherous Leftists who are content to ‘abuse’ the armed forces. They have bipartisian support from some of the Right, and to remind readers that some of the Right are as treacherous as the hard Left but for different motives, consider again those senior Right-wingers who likened Howard to Hitler over the decision to go to war against Hussein -

Australian Liberal Party bigwig calls the US a war criminal

John Valder, a prominent member of Australia’s conservative Liberal Party, called America a war criminal and the liberation of Iraq “the greatest act of aggression by any Western nation since the days of Hitler’s Germany”, neatly putting Bush, Blair and Howard on par with Adolf Hitler.

The Sydney Morning Herald, aka The Saddam Times, never tires of lying about Bush and the liberation of Iraq. This time it wheeled in John Valder, described as an elder of the Liberal Party, to do the dirty deed.

The self-righteous Valder started with the false statement that

Another example, Michael Kroger’s pet retarded clown, Julian Sheezel, who at a function honouring heroes treated an elderly lady (c. 80 years of age) why the war was criminal, parrotting all the lies spun by The Age aka “The Spencer Street Soviet”. The Right has only one concern, themselves, and this is why Rudd is in office.

The war against carbon taxes is hotting up in the US, though this instance, a report by Washington Policy Centre, still underestimates the impact of carbon taxes  greatly-

Cap-and-Trade Could Cost Washington as Many as 18,292 Net Jobs, $5.7 Billion in Personal Income
Economic research institute finds deficiencies in Western Climate Initiative’s analysis of impacts from recommendations

It contains a statement true not only of the impact of carbon taxes and the coercive regulatory measures that will be imposed to force compliance:

“This study shows that increasing taxes and regulations will likely kill jobs and prosperity at a time when we can least afford it.”

The question of supporting the armed forces is not, of course Australians producing weaponry and equipment. It is a question of production such that funds can be collected to support the armed forces without damaging Australians. The Defence Budget is a tiny fraction of the sheer total squander of each tier of Government. Obama’s policies can severely damage US weapons production and then wipe it out, while Rudd, ably assisted by the likes of Bracks, Brumby and Bligh, can crush the capacity to acquire weaponry. Rudd and his Cabinet will ensure Australia is rendered defenceless, in a time when we are at war against a horrendous enemy, Islamo fascists.

Viv Forbes of the Carbon Sense Coalition has put a rather restrained statement of the impactin “Cap-n-Tax will eat the heart out of Australia”.  Before continuing, it should be noted a front for Greens’ propaganda has been set up with a title that certainly reads as an attempt to counter the Carbon Coalition:

Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming. This lot also hope to make a fortune out of carbon tax scams, as their site makes very plain; just another pack of lying parasites who hope to make a fortune out of immiserating millions of Australians, as do those for whom Greg Lindsay and his CIS are working for.

Viv Fordes statements leads a submission to the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Economics, on the Draft Bill the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009″. 22 pages, it is in PDF form here. In the submission, a very interesting observation is made.

In view of Rudd’s plan to plunder Australians for a few billion dollars to make a Greens’ version of a ‘people’s car’  the hybrib chugger (another couple of good socialist regimes had one too - the Nazi’s VW and the Soviet’s Trabant), a report is linked in:

Hybrid car sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed
 
In December, Toyota terminated plans to build the Prius in a $1.3-billion plant it
had built in Mississippi, and Chrysler closed its only hybrid-producing factory.
 
Los Angeles Times , 17 March 2009

It is no suprise at all. Already current in Australia are windmill, ‘wave power’, solar panels, and ethanol scams and all are capital destroyers which impoverish Australians, not that this was ever a consideration that bothered the Right who have also set up these scams. 

It has to be kept in clear view, carbon taxation will hit food production too, with cattle, sheep and pigs also in line for direct taxation. The ethanol fraud destroys food production but what Rudd is about to impose, supported by the Right, will wipe it out. This is without counting in the destruction of capital that supplies a range of capital goods, and input factors - seed, fertilisers, energy, and so forth.

Forbe’s statement and the Carbon Coalition’s submission to set out the impact of carbon taxes is restrained. Laying out the full truth to the parasites in Caberra would, no doubt, see them doing what they are good at in the case of scientists, smearing them.

 Viv Forbes, “Cap-n-Tax will eat the heart out of Australia” (31/3/09)

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that the Emissions Trading Scheme would eat the heart out of regional Australia by destroying jobs in mining, processing, construction, farming, forestry, transport and tourism. 

In a submission to the Australian Senate Economics Committee, the Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the mis-named “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” had nothing to do with carbon or pollution - “it is essentially a cap and a tax on carbon dioxide, the harmless, colourless natural gas that sustains all life on earth”. 

“To cut man’s emissions of carbon dioxide, we need to curb electricity generation, cement manufacture, mining, smelting, refining, all forms of transport, farm and earth moving machinery, all farmed animals, forestry and construction.  In return they would have us believe that the inland will survive when these once vibrant industries are replaced by feral forests feeding on carbon credits, vast mobs of kangaroos, regiments of becalmed wind towers, treeless tracts of ethanol crops and deserts of solar panels. 

“California and Spain have proved that the war on carbon dioxide will kill real jobs faster than fake green jobs can be created. At the same time, the silly claims that alternate energy can provide continuous, economical and reliable power will encourage neglect of Australia’s key reliable low cost electricity source - coal power. 

“When the lights go out, industry migrates to Asia and our power bills soar, it will be too late to prevent great harm to our economy, our jobs and our life style. 

“The global warming hysteria has passed its zenith. The recession is already cutting industrial emissions, and natural cycles are cooling the weather. And the flimsy scientific basis for the hysteria is being demolished daily by a growing army of sceptics. 

“Depopulating the outback is not a sensible policy for any Australian Government. The Senate should refuse to pass this dangerous and unnecessary legislation.”

The legislation is dangerous on many counts. There is one other count, it is also approaching overt totalitarianism and, to point this up, in Victoria aka “Brackistan”, there are now very senior, circumspect figures who are now freely saying Victoria has been converted into a totalitarian state. 

That politicians, including the Right, could even contemplate carbon taxes, using Greens’ lies as an excuse, is a reflection of what they really are. They should be considered criminals, their actions warrant it and the appropriate treatment dealt out to these lying bastards.

Was “earth hour” a success? Depends on how it is viewed.

If failure is counted as all the lights switched off, cities and towns were still lit and many homes too, then it wasn’t a success at all. Last year, Tiny Tim Blair followed Andrew Bolt in printing glossy pics of Carlton ablaze and charts that Bolt had been handed demonstrated how little power had been cut, as prrofs of failure. This year Blair confined himself to one pic and some meaningless cut and paste quotes. Besides a glossy happy snap of a well illuminated New york, Andrew Bolt has pasted in graphs showing how futile ‘earth hour is’. But was it a failure?

It is the wrong way to look at it. It is not a matter of how many householders and firms did and did not switch off lights, which is entirely volitional, and publishing satisfying pictures. It is politicians, preceded by a media propaganda blitz, who ordered lights be turned off that is decisive.

News reports related, for example, “The lights on Sydney Harbour Brigde and the Eiffel Tower went out”. False, and a d…ed lie to boot, made all the more irritating by the infantile expression, “they went out”.  Then again, the Greens cult is a belief in mysterious things that makes the universe jump. Last year, Brumby ordered centrally operated streets’ and government buildings’ lights out. It worked, as blacked out city streets and whole swathes of the suburbs showed.

There were those in that instant who barely avoided serious accidents. It was also disturbing because of the great cover the dictated blackout afforded criminals, as this year too. Those Green pacifiers, ‘eco street lights’ are inadequate as it is, making even driving difficult, with details and oh things like pedestrians popping out suddenly in front of difficult to spot (it seems a favourite past-time of many Melbournians is the great game of chicken).

Whole areas were turned off from the grid. My neighberhood was out for the second time running. Many streets all around Melbourne were out, all on the orders of little dictators pretending to be Cabinet Ministers, as well as Local Councillors. This is what ‘earth hour’ is about, reinforced by relating it to what will deliver a sustained, total blackout, carbon taxes.

A pack of lawless thugs, hectoring Australians, treating them as nothing but dumb oafs and animals to be herded about. Parasites who see nothing wrong in playing little brown-shorts wearing guleiters using the Greens cult as their excuse, to also endanger the lives of Australians. They did so, and thus further entrenched those diseased bastards, the Greens, when this lot should never have been given the chance to draw oxygen. More to the point, it reinforces Greens lies, propaganda, and policies that Left and right of the major parties have plundered taxpayers to advance. It is not a good analogy but to emphasise:

It wasn’t a matter of how many believed in communism, it was a matter of millions obeying their Soviet masters out of fear that counted in the USSR.

It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth saying it, but ‘earth hour’ was a ’success’. What this success is, is transparent. Stopping those who enjoyed the success is no joke. It is serious, it is urgent but it must be fought hard and well and this the cretinous Right have done their best to prevent. That’s why the likes of Tiny Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt damage this cause too. Mind it’s not their best effort. Bolt and Blair, and Albrechtsen have greater damage to other sound causes such as the fight for free labour markets. 

Oh yes, it, was the Green Fanatics’ Dark Hour, by default.

Joy in the morning. Last week, listening to Rudd and co expanding on their version of the New Deal was that. Right nail biting stuff.

An important observation to be made

Regarding the Colebatch article and his reliance on Kates - as summed up in, Follow up to, “Another insight into the Right”. One held it over, because of its distinct force against Rudd’s destructive keynesian spending spree. There is more involved with the question of real wage rates and employment.

In, America-hating leftists lie to protect Obama’s dangerous economic program, Jackson not only supplied a table for the years 1929 to 1939, with 1929 as the base year, of the unemployment rate for each year and index of productivity adjusted real wages. It shows real wages exceeded the value of worker’s output by a large factor, and this was matched by corresponding, persistent high unemployment. He also demonstrated the consumption fallacy through evidence:

McMillion claims that the 1937-38 crash was caused by a reduction in Federal spending. As we can see from the chart below both Federal and total government spending increased until 1936 when Federal spending dropped from 10.94 per cent of GDP to 9.58 per cent of GDP while total spending (Federal and state) fell from 20.17 per cent of GDP in 1935 to 18.74 per cent of GDP in 1937. These are falls of 12.7 per cent and 7.1 per cent respectively. [Table supplied].

The fall in total government spending amounted to a paltry 1.43 per cent of GDP…

This nonsense became so entrenched that in 1943 Paul Samuelson confidently predicted that when the war ended and government spending was significantly cut mass unemployment would return on the scale of the 1930s….

Between 1945 and 1947 the Truman government slashed Federal annual spending…

a staggering 62 per cent reduction and amounted to 26 per cent of GDP as it stood in 1945. Instead of America spiralling into a depression with 8 million unemployed — as predicted — it began the longest period of prosperity in its history. What McMillion and the rest of the leftists ignore is the fact that it was a massive union push for higher real wages that caused the 1937-38 crash.

The killer is, Jackson set out, America was in recovery before Rossevelt imposed his disastrous “New deal”. On the current recession, he restates it another way:

If Megalogenis were right then the closing of “wallets across the world” would have preceded the contraction in manufacturing. Yet manufacturing in the US has been contracting for 13 months and for at least 9 months in Australia. According to Greg Evans’ logic Rudd’s $10.4 billion spending splurge should have seen manufacturing rebound. Instead it continued to contract. The table below shows what an awful state manufacturing is in.

The economy tanks as politicians look the wrong way

In summary, consumption is never the problem. That it rises in recessions is stark testament to the fact. It is savings that is crucial, which Rudd and Premiers are busy extinguishing.

Needless to say, imposing effective minimum wage rates (rates greater than the marginal value of labour’s product), using as the excuse that they will raise consumption and so deliver growth, is completely false. The only growth that delivers is in the one called unemployment.  

Through the combination of keynesian snake-oil and carbon taxes, what Rudd and Swann are about to do to Australians, should they persist, is too chilling to contemplate. Scarier is, what sits on the Opposition benches are no better. It is amusing that the stiffest Opposition Rudd has faced is from Vaclav Haval, who had no hesitation in declaring Rudd’s domestic economic policies and his grand “internationalisto” version means only one thing, destruction. Unable to defend his economic larceny, all Rudd could do was use the Right’s standard argument against Haval (jerk knee and come out smearing)!

Rudd and Swann are illiterates. However, in view of their positions, ignorance is no excue and so it is best to call them liars. The same applies to Peter Costello and Turnbull.

Entertain no doubt about it: it doesn’t matter what anyone does, most will be ruined if the lying illiterate parasites in Canberra, and in States’ Parliaments, continue on their merry, Statist, all consuming, all regulating ways. It’s a bit like being caught in the middle of a two mile tunnel with a bloody great truck entering it atnasty pace. Nowhere to run. Well, the duty of serfs is to be taxed for all they have and then go and die in some obscure, dark hole, silently.

The Green’s cult is insane. No science behind it (mere mumbo jumbo mixed with belief in magic and fixed on belief in “Mother Nature”, as at least one Victorian Greens Mayoress had the honesty to declare in the service for the killed the “National Day of Mourning ceremony” at Rod Laver Arena. She has blood on her hands too over the firestorms. Mayoress Gunther, of one of the towns destroyed, also had the hide to cry crocodile tears over animals killed in the fires. The rest of the ’service’ was a bloody mockery too; blasphemous it could be said. On the appalling subject, this is part of the truth, only a tiny part of it:

“THE Bushfires Royal Commission heard today that “greenie-inspired” policies of local councils had cost dozens of lives.”

Greens policies destroys paying jobs

The tryants of history, from Pharoahs to Stalinist dictators, created jobs too. They called their ‘job creation’ scheme slavery. Any man can engage in job creation at home and keep fit too! Try a bit of gardening, cleaning the boots, a little ironing, spend a little time perfecting the fly casting technique and then it’s on with the roast and imbibe a bottle of red until its done and uncork another. Wash the dishes and slide under the covers for a good night’s snooze after a busy ‘job creation’ day. Satisfying, certainly, but it doesn’t put the garden together, buy gardening tools, fly fishing equipment, the roast and a cellar full of good reds. Greens policies will ensure many cannot enjoy ‘job creation’.

The mirage of “green jobs”

Barack Obama promised that his cap-and-trade energy policies would fund an explosion of “green jobs”

This is the same rubbish that Rudd, Bracks, Brumby, Wong and Garrett believe, and a number of Union bosses. So do too the Right. Malcolm Turnbull isn’t the only one. There is also, for example, Kroger toad and Turnbull’s shadow chief guru of the “Evironment”, Reg Hunt. In the case of Greg Lindsay and his CIS, however, it’s a case of lying about economic truths. and rejecting science, to concede Greens lies.

“Spain used to think the same thing, but Bloomberg reports that the explosiion turned into an implosion.”

The item links an article relating, for each ‘green job created’ in Spain, 2.2. jobs will be wiped out in real production, and furthermore, each ‘green job created’ requires a subsidy of $774,000. It also relates:

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

 The above seems rather a litote. What about firms that simply folded? All the capital seized by coercive measures and destroyed on the speudo Greens businesses? It is not simply the jobs destroyed, but the impoverishment of many due to the mass destruction of capital, through the imposition of Greens pscychopathically insane policies.

Greens policies are carbon taxes. They don’t wipe out simply jobs. They wipe out the very reasons why good, burdened, long suffering men and women rise in the morning to go out and earn a pay packet. it is all before Rudd imposed the overt carbon taxes that he set for mid 2010 - call it Hell Year.

In the mean-time, another carbon tax:

The decision to eradicate the incandescent light bulb, for the Greens’ mercury filled version. They are not ‘efficient’, with further costs including how to dispose of them. Then there is the risk of being killed by mercury poisoning, should one of these Greenie bulbs break. There has been at least one reported case, a man nearly died but he was rushed to hospital quickly enough to save his life. Jackson sums up a few pertinent points in, The humble light bulb: a victim of political stupidity and green zealotry. Yet, these are not all the costs involved.

Anyone noticed that turning the good old incandescent, bedside light bulb off instantly cools the bedroom? It’s rather noticeable. It turns out that Rudd’s determination to eradicate the incandescent light bulb can raise heating costs by a large factor:

Efficient lighting equals higher heat bills: study

Allowing for the fact that describing the “eco bulb” is efficient is a lie:

… incandescent bulbs do more than just light our homes. During the long winter months, they also generate heat. The new CFL bulbs on the other hand produce minimal heat so the loss has to be made up by fossil-fuel burning gas, oil or wood to heat your home.

“To some extent, the case [in favour of CFL bulbs] has been oversold” because of the offset in higher heating costs, he said.

“Green Government Housing can Kill”

The Bracks and Brumby Cabinets of Victoria aka “Brackistan” have forced the prices of housing sky-high through stamp duty, ‘community services taxes’ and Green compliance regulations. They have also blown millions of dollars on their own house-building scams that turn out to contain extra boons how to punish tapxyers further and how to kill off grannies:

Green apartments too hot to handle

APARTMENTS in the state’s flagship green public housing development are so hot in summer that authorities have been forced to install airconditioners.

The Government boasts the award-winning $32.3 million K2 apartment development in Windsor is the “most environmentally sustainable public housing development in Australia” and is designed to use 55 per cent less mains electricity.

But summer temperatures in some apartments were so high the Office of Housing had to install airconditioners because the heat posed health risks to elderly residents.

“K2″ is, presumably, a reference to the toilet paper called the “Kyoto Treaty”. Each time Kyoto occurs these days, the instant association is a feral animal that rhymes in name and must be shot.

Energy consumption

Kevin Rudd’s ETS tax will cost each household at a minimum $300 per month extra on their energy bills. The truth is, the imposed burden will be around $500 per month. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is, as remarked previously, defective in the data and reports it produces. At last, however, it has come up with something that can be used with confidence. It has reported:

…between 1988 and now Australian household electricity consumption has gone up by 49 per cent.

Total national residential power consumption grew from 40,000 gigawatt hours to 59,000 GWh annually, commercial and industrial demand rose from 84,000 GWh to 140,000 GWh.

The increase is despite 60% of homes now have ‘energy saving’ fixtures.

There are 8,470,875 households on mains supply. What this means is Australian householders alone are faced with at the minimum a $25.413 billion per month increase in their energy bills. The truth is, they face around $42.355 billion per month imposed burden. This is before considering the burdens firms will face and when this is contemplated. What will Australians face but being wiped out, literally.

It will destroy companies first off. that means there will be many Australians won’t be earning anything to endure the misery of finding another $300 to $500 to pay electricity bills. Taken with his other destructive economic ‘policies’, Rudd will be responsible for literally ruining millions of Australians, making many genuinely destitute, and many others not much better off. 

Rudd is not solely guilty, neither the Greens with him. Also the Right, who have supported these psyhcopathic policies. Criminals, they with Bracks and Brumby are genuine criminals.

An insane, criminal cult, this is what Australians are being sacrificed for, by mainstream politicians. After all, one front of diseased Left fanatics, the Greens,  do not hold Federal and States’ Treasury benches. Right and Left went out of their way to buy the votes of these slimes by imposing ‘watermelon red’ policies.

Apologies readers for the interruption in postings. The interfering matters are now out the way, so postings will be resumed tomorrow.

Douglas.

Economic thinking was initiated by the Greeks c. 500 BC. Under the Roman Empire, economics dropped out of sight. The reason was, the Roman Empire suppressed free markets, and the possibility for some, though this is not altogether straight forward. The Roman Empire was an administrative-military order. Life in Rome and Italy was a hard, miserable existence for many. For some odd reason, the Roman Games, contrary to current ‘orthodoxy’ in Victoria, didn’t do a blessed thing for the miserable sods, except for one thing:

The Games were a good blunt and bloody warning: Try anything against us and this is what will be done to you.

The odd massacre of smelly plebs reinforced the point.

It is unclear how much Victorians have been sacked for so that the self styled elite can “have fun”, as the likes of Robert Doyle and Red Ted Baillieu also happily declare. Yet, even these two bricks realise there is something needing covering up and so they tack on the rider, ‘and it is investment and means jobs and investment.’ Emperors spent huge fortunes on games, they had fun but the unwashed remained the unwashed and the Empire staggered and reeled on into collapse.

Ron started up the wheeze of Roman economics under Kennett. The Grand Prix. Walker explained on radio some weeks ago that it was needed to lift Victoria out of recession and gloom. The Grand Prix did no such thing.

Recovery in Victoria came the hard way, savings and its accumulation. I observed it in country Victoria, mainly because it was highly noticeable. Tellingly, because the 1980’s recession was so severe, and the Cain and Kirner Governments had spent and taxed until there wasn’t much left to tax. All that Kennett and Stockdale could do, was to reign in Government consumption. This explains a paradox:

The appearance of the Victorian Right as Liberals, when they are Statists. The Right solved their financial limitations by privatisation. This wasn’t a genuine free market reform of production of things hitherto controlled by the Government. It was a way to extract high revenues without taxpayers noticing. Thus, they established Vic, Inc., as advised by the IPA and CIS.

Walker has repeatedly declared, “You can’t buy advertising like that”. So what. When South Koreans were in recovery following the Korean War, they didn’t give a fig about that type of ‘advertising’. They were interested in only one thing, savings. Or, Hong Kong, or Switzerland.

Advertising has its place, as a subset of the logistics of some firms (not all firms) for distribution of principally high volume consumer markets. Walker’s notion has nothing to do with that important function. His, is a vulgar, meaningless spin on something that is nasty. Yet, Walker is not the only one to hold it… Bracks, Brumby, Doyle, and Baillieu do too. Left and Right are bipartisan in Brackistan.

Red Ted is attacking Brumby for throwing taxpayers’ money at golfing tournaments and Tiger Woods. There are those who might, at first glance, a glimpse of something not noticed for some time, a hint of Liberal principals. Don’t be a fool man.

His reason is the golf does not have the “international exposure” and attraction as the Grand Prix and Tennis. Well, Bracks and Brumby have thrown tens of millions of dollars at AFL, and they have no noticeable international’ appeal  either.

But, heck, if that is what warrants the confiscation of funds from Victorians so a few can “have fun”, I will come up with a ‘business plan’ that will guarantee ‘Australian, elite snail racing” is an” international” sport. This must mean I am entitled to a cool $50-60 million. Surely it must have at least that ‘value’, since Anna Bligh is about to sack Queenslanders for $60million to build a stadium for the parochial AFL.

Oh, it’s not only motor racing, AFL football, the odd multi-billion dollar Commonwealth Games, “international elite swimming”, and cricket either. It’s also obscure events such as netball, hockey, bicycling and lord knows what else. Bracks stiffed Victorians for $2b to have fun watching the Commonwealth Games.  So, how many billions have been thrown at sports in total?!

In 2006, Bracks threatened fines of up to $240,000 if media showed pictures of rehearsals for the Commonwealth Games’ opening ceremony. Today, Brumby might well be threatening anyone for finding out and publishing how much he and his Cabinet of larcenous thugs might by robbing from Victorians and throwing at golf games. After all, he has just attempted to do that over the water pipeline, despite the fact that it is Victorians who are being compelled to pay for this disgusting waste of their former private property.

The Herald Sun engaged today in a general spray against Red Ted. It would be good if the H.S. had a clue as to what to hit him for and why:

The latest example is condemning the Brumby Government’s initiative in bringing out the world’s most successful sportsman, golfer Tiger Woods, to play in the Australian Masters in Melbourne.

This was preceded by another economic illiterate and bosom pal of Brumby and Bracks, Eddie McGuire. Yesterday, McGuire made the same claims listed above, in the Herald Sun; the litany of international exposure, advertising that can’t be bought (bah, there are companies who do, for the right reasons), commercial impact, tourist dollars, and fun. Any who ‘knock it’ are kill-joys; there, opponents knocked over stone cold.

Of course the consumption fallacy, spending drives growth, is their excuse, as it is for Rudd’s $52 billion shopping spree. There it is. Romanomics Brackistan style is not investment. It is taking from Victorians, and it means they don’t get to spend it on what they value. No, instead they watch a few have fun, and fewer still made wealthier through nothing more than larceny and this is not the end of it.

It is not only robbing Victorians of their funds but what that means, taking funds that would be sunk into real  investment and blowing them away on another Romanesque “binge”. This means, consequently that real jobs are also destroyed. It is the stark truth of the cost: eliminating capital and the consequences of this, cutting real wages - a real decrease in living standards, a matter that is central to what is related in the article immediately below.

Ted’s complaint against Brumby robbing Victorians in order to ‘have fun’ watching Tiger Woods belt a little ball around is dead flat spastic. There is no difference between doing this to stage what Ted considers a modest local event and to stage “international events”.  Ted is not alone. He typifies the Right-wing clique that has destroyed the Liberal Party.

What the Right has jobbed into Parliamentary seats are windows into them. No amount of black-out paint works to conceal the ugly truth. Bligh and her ALP Cabinet, though hated by Queenslanders for what they have done, have been handed another term in Office, because of those unprincipled, economic ignoramuses the Right.

The Right have not only handed Brumby and his Cabinet of lying thugs the next election, they are cementing it rock solid. Then, that is why Victorians won’t vote for the Liberal Party, it exists in name only and what smears the name Liberal are, in many respects, no d…..d better than Brumby and his club of gangsters. There are those who are wondering if they are not a plant by diseased Leftists, but this assumes brains and the Right is too stupid to carry this off without being caught red-handed.

The HR Nicholls Society and their fellow club-men in the Howard Cabinets, Fifield, Costello, and Minchin demonstrated that it does on labour market economics, by how they wrecked the fight for free labour markets, and scuppered the Liberal Party with it. They caused the 2007 election defeat by 2005. This was predicted. In 2005, Cambria uncovered research that confirmed this:

“The ACTU hired the highly experienced US national pollster Vic Fingerhut. His findings?” [In, Are Liberal Party blue bloods sinking the Government’s workplace reforms?] ⁽¹⁾

The impact of lousy economics applies to recessions, what causes them, and how sound recovery occurs. It applies generally to the great free market cause.

The current recession is not a repeat of the 1930’s depression. Neither is it the worst since the 1930’s, but it is the worst recession since the 1980’s. It can, however, be rendered nastier. Lousy economic policies will do that. Lousy economics commentary gives oxygen to lousy economic policies. Obama in America and Rudd in Australia are committed to them; the commentariat abets them.

Lousy economics, as in the case of labour market reform, also serves only to dissuade many voters against what is good for everyone, free markets. The effect is heightened by the Right’s contempt for the “uppity” man in the street, and abusing him for questioning anything these geniuses say. Hal Colebatch showed both qualities in his article for The American Spectator.

Then there is the obvious, he cribbed the seriously flawed Kates article. It’s clear Colebatch doesn’t understand what is wrong with the Kates’ article. It’s not a matter of being a first rate economist. It is a matter of intellectual attention and application to those who are. Colebatch doesn’t even pass this.

It is crystal clear he is lost on the crucial relationship between real wage rates and unemployment, that real wage rates exceeding the marginal value of product causes unemployment. As noted, the data Kates relied on, by Withers and Pole, understates persistent unemployment during the Great Depression, by a large factor. As also observed, the crucial  question of whether real wage rates exceeded the marginal product of labour is missing in the Kates’ paper.

While it is for the US in, America-hating leftists lie to protect Obama’s dangerous economic program, Jackson has supplied a table  for the years 1929 to 1939, with 1929 as the base year, of the unemployment rate for each year and index of productivity adjusted real wages. It shows real wages exceeded the value of worker’s output by a large factor, and this was matched by corresponding, persistent high unemployment.

Jackson begins:

“Infuriated by the mounting evidence that Roosevelt’s New Deal was an economic disaster the left has struck back. As expected, it did so with its usual contempt for the facts… Economic growth is the process of capital accumulation, not a simple increase in GDP. “It is only capital accumulation that can raise real wages for all, for it is at once an increases in the ratio of capital to labour, and this raises the marginal productivity of labour. To simplify, it is all the difference between a man using a fork and spade or a tractor to produce potatoes and, therefore, by which means the man will earn more.

raising taxes and government spending is exactly what Hoover and Roosevelt did. Did the economy recover. Of course not.

By 1931 Hoover was desperate to counter the growing deficit so he raised taxes in December of that year.

What ultimately matters with respect to fiscal policy is spending. This should be borne in mind when the Democrats announce even more huge spending programs.

… Prior to Hoover recessions-depressions were allowed to work themselves out. In other words, previous administrations had the good sense not to interfere with the adjustment process that eliminated malinvestments created by monetary expansion.

In 1932 Hoover was proudly boasting that America had “the highest real wages in the world”. And this was when unemployment had reached 23 per cent and was still rising. That the rise in real wage rates brought about…

Starting from March 1933 the American economy began to rally as confidence began to return, the banks reopened and inventories fell below a sustainable level and orderly buying by retailers started to emerge.

The Fed’s index of production (1923-25) rose from 60 in March 1933 to 100 in July.

Having taken a very brief look at the economic illiteracy and political follies of those characters that gave us the Great Depression it’s time to return to Obama’s inability to learn anything from history. It follows from his promise to swamp the country wit…

The lesson of the 1930s that Obama refuses to learn

The following article is a point by point comparison between Obama’s policies and FDR’s New Deal:

Obama’s economic policy: the same Old New Deal

As Obama, Rudd attacked financial markets for the recession and extended it to general attack on free markets. Never mind that it was caused by monetary expansion, and was not and never is brought about by free markets. It might be observed, the Centre for Independent Studies and The Institute of Public Affairs have not eviscerated Rudd for this, not that they are capable of doing so (but this is the subject of another item). To take care of this problem, the following example of how to do it:

Prime Minister Rudd’s misbegotten assault on the market goes unchallenged

Rudd’s policies compare with many of Obama’s, and the implications are bad enough without considering the impact of carbon taxation, for which accumulated evidence to date makes abundantly clear - it results only in what theory predicts, extinction of precious capital.

It must also be kept in view that in Victoria alone, the Bracks and Brumby Cabinets have taken hold of billions of dollars of savings to throw at capital destroying schemes such as ‘alternative energy’ and a ‘desalination plant’. Billions also thrown already on consumption, ‘elite sports’ being an ‘international” example.

Federal and States Governments have, over the decades, multiplied regulations that eliminate advantages of investing in Australia, combined with an extensive array of taxes that hits capital and its accumulation, causing further extensive and intensive damage.

The inverse of the J curve is true. Professor Sinclair Davidson, and Chris Berg, begged to differ. Professor Sinclair Davidson is yet to deliver his astounding paper on why the inverse is not true. The importance of this is, it was raised as a serious consideration, in the course of a rebuttal of the Davidson-Berg paper (”Thumping the Table, IPA Review),

Is monetary policy destroying the country’s manufacturing base?

Rudd protested in Parliament that he could not sit back and do nothing. The reverse is true.  His policies can compound the damage. Tack on ‘industry policy’ and “corporativo”, and then finish all of with carbon taxes, what Rudd can do is diminish living standards. How much damage can be caused is chilling to contemplate.

Reverting to anti-free labour market, effective minimum wages might disguise the impact of Rudd’s policies for some, but won’t for many, and that means also all those made unemployed because of re-imposition of effective minimum wages, reintroduced last week with the Cabinet’s Bill passed through the Senate reversing labour market reform.

So, Australians face being forced to live with the prospect of three dangers being realised:

Falling real wages, certainly for many Australians, as investment continues to be damaged because of lousy policies,

A 100% wage cut for those made unemployed because of the re-imposition of effective minimum wages.

The emergence of persistent, high unemployment.

Dangers brought about by lousy economics, and lousy defence of free markets. It wasn’t genuine Liberals who brought this about. It wasn’t Rudd and the Left who did it. It was the arrogant Right, holding to lousy notions they purvey as economics, and flung Rudd and his Cabinet of Leftist cretins into office.

Tom Switzer in the Spectator Australia, defended the Rightwing clique. This follows, since they are his pals; Tom Switzer is “a research fellow at the IPA“. Though, his opening is, to say the least, out of proportion -

“To whom are these stalwarts of the Canberra press gallery referring? No, not remnants of the ousted Taleban leadership in Afghanistan”.

At the other extreme, a Leftist who has engaged in the campaign against free labour markets and the re-imposition of effective minimum wages, Noel Baxendell, said:

“The H R Nicholls Society has much in common with the Communist Party in the Stalinst era - secretive⁽¹⁾, ideologically blinded⁽²⁾ and above all undemocratic ⁽³⁾.”

1. Hardly, secretive. More like, furtive, back-stabbing sneaks.

2. They don’t hold any idea, so they can’t be. Besides, free markets is not an ideology, but this is lost on the Right too - Costello also smeared Adam Smith, saying he invented ‘laissez faire’ ideology. Smith committed errors that caused great damage, but treating free markets and economics of, as an ideology wasn’t one of them; the Right commits it as well as the Left.

3. That’s correct. It is why the Right-wing clique has succeeded in destroying the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party. Bets are now being placed by even angry, genuine Liberals on whether it survives until December, or until January 1^st and then falls down dead, or draws a few more dying breaths into 2010 before being carted off to the dog and bone man.

The likes of Baxendell can freely attack labour market reform because of that lot of Liberal Party wreckers and their anti-free market clunker tanks - IPA, CIS, HR Nicholls Society.

1. The confirmation, properly, considered, was conditional on Cabinet remaining glued to the ill-advice the Right funneled into it. Yet, 2005 was late in the day.  To undo the damage, and fight the case correctly, and where it counts - with voters, would have required a rapidly raised, determined, well supported, robust public fight. The Right through such as Julian Sheezel, Senator Nick Minchin, and Michael Kroger made sure this could not be effected.

The Right is still shredding the credibility of this sound, therefore, highly moral cause. The Opposition comedy act in Parliament last week was another demonstration of this.

Because of the hubris of the Right. Another sign is, rumour is rife Rudd will call an early election, on the strength of labour markets. In other words, Rudd is confident and his confidence is all due to what nominally opposes him are, of some, as ignorant as he is and others are worse.

The Right’s destruction of the fight for free labour markets stemmed from their hubris, as the risible claims they purveyed as the economic case shows. The Right cannot help themselves. Hal Colebatch’s article for The American Spectator was brilliant, because it exposed what Colebatch typifies too, what the Right are, and in a very prominent, public place. It was a delight.

One of the many virtues Hal demonstrated is the Right’s belief they neither have to engage the man in the street, nor soundly address their concerns. It was easy to tell when he abused Eurydice, and all because:

- He’s an economic ignoramus.

- The Right’s virtue of arrogance, whatever they say the modest man should believe it.

Contrast the distinguished scientists who write for the public, explaining science, attacking mumbo jumbo such as the Greens’ lie of human Co2 emissions causes global warming, their willingness to respond to challenges and engage directly the man in the street. The Left, the hard Left, and the diseased Left also know the importance of this.

Only the Right cannot see the laugh in their efforts in calling the Left black. It must be repeated, the spectrum on the Left is wider than the Right paints it. There are intuitively genuine Liberals in the ALP and unions, and they are there because of the Right. I know this, because numbers of them have told me just that. Whether the Right believes it is up to them, as also on another interesting observation:

Outside of the Greens fanatics, other treacherous Leftists, and cretins such as Wong and Rudd, intellectual engagement on the Left is a little more robust than the Right assumes. Not only this, they don’t regard new talent as a threat and, therefore, strive to suppress it and succeed in doing so. This is why Michael Costa of the N.S.W. ALP machine is writing for The Australian, despite a good splattering of treacherous Leftists such as Geoff Elliott.

Amusing. The Right scream censorship when they are generously carried by radio, newspaper, and television. What they mean is, they and they alone should be heard. So, while this lot whine and smear, as they busily suppress genuine Liberal guns, smearing them and so forth, there is Michael Costa who is doing what the Right cannot do and are not, in  any case prepared to do, smash Leftists in the face! Costa is eviscerating Rudd, in the Australian, because he knows what Rudd’s policies means, and he has explained what they mean.

A man from the Left! While, there are two genuine Liberals, who are economists of the first rank, who are ignored and one of them, worse, is defamed by the Right to stop him being heard in public.

Quadrant has come to the party. Sadly, it is not the Spectator, which is disappointing for the international audience of very large numbers who love finding out about the wit and genius of the Right. Still, it is a delight they have decided to lend a hand in the preparation of this item. I thank Quadrant from the bottom of my heart.

Intellectual delusions, Mervyn F. Bendle, Quadrant, 16/3/09

No objection to Bendle’s complaint against treacherous, lying hard Leftists smearing Howard as such, but what is this? On, Silencing Dissent, by Clive Hamilton & Sarah Maddison, Bendle complains:

The most recent example of this uniquely Australian sub-genre of Windschuttle-bashing takes a set of impressionistic accounts of the Armenian genocide… as if these horrendous events were mere practice runs for the ultimate infamy…

And this leads us to a further contribution from the left. In yet another paroxysm of Howard-hatred the authors concerned invent a very telling oxymoron – ‘postmodern conservatism’ – to construct a demented tale about how the Howard government…

His punchline:

This depressing trawl through the intellectual shallows of the left throws up another pathetic effort. This purports to be a comparative study of the ‘culture wars’…

The writers of such work seem to have become so arrogant in their academic and ideological ascendancy that they feel no need to control their hyperbole, or get their facts right, their arguments in order, or their cases balanced.

The likes of Hamilton are lying, treacherous Leftists. Intellectual dishonesty is their game. What is wrong is they get away with it, as Geoff Elliot does in The Australian.  They do so because the Right are also “intellectually shallow”and cowards, compounding a difference.

The Left works to convince the man in the street. The Right believes the man in the street is so many cattle and sheep to be shoved around by their superiors. It showed out in Hal Colebatch’s screech against Eurydice, who raised points, irrespective of whether right or wrong, needed a sound reply. Not Hal, calling Eurydice a “troll”, he finished by saying in effect, “I know all that needs to be known, you just swallow it.” How bad is this?

Any erroneous notions Eurydice holds remain intact, because it has not been explained why. Any intuitively true notions held are lost because they are not secured by sound explanation. Eurydice is left in the dark. What can happen?

Exactly what Australians did to the Liberal Party, voted them out of office in 2007 because the Right stuffed up the case for Labour market reform, thus could not fight the ACTU, and are too gutless to take them on in direct public confrontation and just as well they didn’t, they would have convinced many more voters to back Rudd. Ha, this is precisely what Rudd is counting on, and their is nothing much against calling an early election as the upshot. Brilliant!

While fulminating against the Left for intellectual dishonesty, Bendle is strangely silent on his Right-wing Pals who are also intellectual dishonest:

Ray Evans contributes to Quadrant. Ray Evans contrinutes to the IPA Review, and joined in the ‘let’s bash Howard’ bumper issue following the 2007 election defeat.

IPA Review editor, Chris Berg, who with Andrew Kemp wrote an atrocious fabrication of the history of economic thought -Islam and the free market.

The unmitigated fraud committed by Greg Lindsay and the CIS, lobbying for carbon taxes which will ruin millions of Australians, and conceded the Greens’ lies.

Janet Albrechtsen, whose record of intellectual dishonesty is long too. Andrew Bolt. Tim Blair. We could continue rolling out the names of the Right who are intellectually dishonest but this would consume several pages, complete with citations of their formidable exercises in feebleness coated in dishonesty.

For some very strange reason, the word hypocrisy and the name Bendle have formed some sort of association in the old blanc mange. Therefore, it is best to record it now, just in case it does mean something.

To read the Right on a range of grave matters is also “a depressing trawl through the intellectual shallows”. Indeed, Bendle commits “intellectual bilge” in what he obviously considered a clever remark:

“The recurring theme in these works is that Australia is a fascistic, totalitarian state…attacking the Howard government for systematically silencing dissent in Australia…. the contributors apparently picture themselves leading an ideological ‘resistance’… perhaps emulating Antonio Gramsci and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the antipodes.

Antonio was a dedicated Marxist. Mussolini’s fascist position was developed out of differences between Marxists. Sobbing over Gramsci is like sobbing over Trotsky. Trotsky was killed only because of internal power struggles, and not because he wasn’t a good Marxist buthcher like Lenin and Stalin; he was . But Bendle’s remark is not so much a good sob, it reads as a sarcastic put down of Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was no Marxist, nor Fascist. He was attracted, a brief dalliance, to the Hegelian school of theologians, but the attraction was Barth ⁽¹⁾ and his work. Bonhoeffer rejected it as not merely a blind alley, but false. Orthodox Lutheran, he yet admired the Catholic Church; both influenced his intellectual shift and development.

Bonhoeffer rejected Hegelianism because it is loaded with the very errors that led to the National Socialist regime. This was a turning point. Bonhoeffer didn’t merely question his intellectual foundations, he blasted them away. The upshot is, in contrast to the Hegelians theologians, he arrived at a genuinely apostolic position. Rather like Sts. Paul, John, Luke, and very many successive seminal theologians, Catholic and Protestant, Bonhoeffer lifted his theological brain up by his own bootstraps.

His Letters from Prison show the emerging lines he was taking. I have a view as to where they would have lead. His Christology could be taken for that of a Catholic theologian. It squares with the creed. Equating Bonhoeffer and Gramsci is a bloody, shallow smear against Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer, wasn’t a martyr, bye the bye. He joined the attempt to assassinate Hitler, because as a man, he concluded it was the only right thing to do. He did not use faith and Church as a crutch. Kevin Rudd also believes he knows Bonhoeffer, as also many clerics Left and Right. They don’t. Bonhoeffer would recognise what Rudd is, and not a few on the Right too.

The point to it is, the Right love to demonstrate their intellectual superiority through use of anachronisms (this shows they are classical scholars of the first rank) and then dragging in seminal names in any core field, pretending that they know them ( this shows they are intellectual giants too). So, too, Bendle.

Thus the Right, because of their hubris, have ceded tremendous ground to the Left that should never have been surrendered because it is good ground, and continue to cede it. What Bendle discloses also typifies the Right, they whine because the Left does not do as they do.

There are those on the Left who do hold “intellectual delusions” but this does not necessarily apply to all of them, and I mean the hard Left, and the diseased Left too. They are ideologically driven. They understand how crucial the fight over ideas and truth before the public is. They are aware of limits, but there is no-one in the mainstream, public arena to hurt them with “limits”. They know there are those waiting in the wings who can.

The Right’s “intellectual delusions” is due to their hubris. Consequently, they stuff up every time. It’s no joke, out of public sight, the Left have a good laugh at the “clowns” and “buffoons”. As one ACTU source told me, they could not believe it when they found out the HR Nicholls Society was to advise Cabinet on labour market reform. They believed it was a joke or a cunning plan to put them off guard and, as the ACTU source told me, then the gun they fear would be in their way blazing away with a flame-thrower, Jackson. They checked to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

(1) Why Barth turned to Hegelianism was due to theological concerns. Barth misunderstood Schleirmacher, whose Christology is fine, in itself. Schleirmacher’s mistake, to suggest, was his concern with certainty. He turned to Plato and Descartes fusing them. His mistake is in philosophy.

Barth held the reverse estimation of Schleirmacher, and this is Barth’s blunder, but there it is, Barth turned to Hegelianism as the solution to his dilemma and it shows in the first chapters of Church Dogmatics, they are the attempt to secure epistemology, and it is unsalvageably bad.

The problem of course, it is no defence against socialism and corrosion of the Church’s confession. It is the surrender to the former and the evacuation of the latter for socialism. This is what Bonhoeffer also rejected. He returned to fundamental theological reasoning.

Barth was insecure. He did entertains doubts that he had understood Schliermacher correctly. The other major Hegelian, von Rad, towards the end of his major enterprise, went into shock, and he could not conceal it in vol. II of his work, Old Testament Theology. A stark cry of protest.

Albert Schweizer made a mistake in his assessment of Schleirmacher, which damaged the latter for the wrong reasons. 

Considered, in the 1970’s to 1930’s, theologians in Germany proceeded confidently, but they had not digested what they were dealing with and, consequently, doing as thoroughly as they assumed. This, however, is all very far from Bendle’s nonsense of putting Bonhoeffer and Gramsci on the same plane:

A bloody insult to Bonhoeffer, a distinguished and genuinely decent and brave man, that is what that is, Bendle.