Mangled Thoughts

Apologies, readers for the interruption over the last week. Some serious matters needed hammering out.

From the last posts, we were winding up to ram home a few more hard truths about Australia’s Right, their think tanks the Centre of Independent Studies and Institute of Public Affairs, and what they are responsible for. Tomorrow we are unleashing.

For now, the CIS is sticking to its intellectual and moral fraud (though this assumes they possessed a moral compass to smash) in pushing carbon taxation.

Professor Ian Plimer has come out against the fraud of man causes global warming. He has published a book summarising some of the major falsehoods spun by boosters of the Greens’ lies. The essential thing is Plimer’s proper concern for science and he also bluntly states, the lie is an attack on science. While not only the diseased Left, but also the Right have ignored the many Australian scientists who have over the years have attacked the Greens lie, and also smeared scientists, Professor Plimer, because of his reputation and standing, presents a headache for the Left and the Right and their grand aim to smash Australians with carbon taxes and related greens policies.

So, for tonight:

Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2009

Bogus Models Used To Justify Anti-CO2 Push

So why is Greg Lindsay and his superannuation fund, the Centre for Independent Studies, still pushing the garbage and downright lies of man causes ‘global warming’, and carbon taxes are ‘costless’. Oh, I know; his chums who hope to make themselves wealthier through carbon taxation. The good thing about this is, they have fully revealed their claim to be defending free markets and genuine Liberal principles is bogus. They, along with the other clunker tank the IPA,  never have.

It is bad enough the Right laid the foundations for Brackistan and Ruddistan. They are not economic and scientific illiterates, because this assumes they have brain cells in order to be ignorant. Inbred cretins, that is all that they are.

It looks like some items have been knocked out. I put it down to the rumcorps’ server migration. On item that seems irretrievable finished on Albrechtsen’s complaint about why there is no Australian P.J. O’Rourke.

O’Rourke is a satirist. There is an Australian O’Rourke and he is a natural; Bunny Champers. The likes of Albrechtsen have ensured Champers and any other real talent have been suppressed. Then again, Champers is a natural because he is one of the Right. This disturbed the Right,  because he’s one of them.

While Champers merrily exposed the likes of those treacherous leftist liars, Geoff Elliott and Ramsay, some might say it was accidental. How he managed it is beyond me, but he did.  In the course of heroic pursuits Champers modestly related, he provided a window into the Right and this, at a very good guess - to judge from Champers’ extensive body of articles, had them reaching for certain containers and filling volumes of black books with one name.

Now, I have to say, I’m one who has missed Champers but, a good chump chap can’t be held down. He’s back with a memoir of some of his finest hours:

Bunny Champers takes on Rupert Murdoch’s ungrateful Australian

The firm and its size is a market phenomenon; the market decides the size of the firm. Coase nailed this. What drives the formation of firms is capital formation and scale of capital. Interestingly, this is reflected in the development of Common Law with the emergence of joint stock companies. Interesting but not surprising because free markets, which are rooted in inalienable property rights, is the ground of Common law.

Telstra

Is not a free market firm. Monopolies exist only when politicians impose them, and that is the origin of Telstra, under its first name, Telecom. Concentration, how many firms, bye the bye, contrary to the fiction bound falshehood of perfect competition, is not the definition of a competitive market. More-over, to speak of market is if, as in this case, telecommunications is homogeneous, is nonsense. There is no single market in telecommunication. So numbers of firms and capital scales, and what needs to be put in place, physical capital, in any period, has not been discovered by entrepreneurs and investors as guided by the valuations of customers. The whole shambolic business of telecommunications in Australia is due to what monopoly amounts, a political-bureaucratic attempt to beat markets and that is how monopolies are formed, as bureaucracies.

The Right, addicted to the fiction of perfect competition assumed breaking up monopolies or, as in the case of Telstra, ‘privatising’ them but hedging them by regulations to effect perfect competition, eliminates the burdens imposed through monopolies. There is a problem internal to Telstra’s investments that rubs against the regulations imposed on it, its shareholders’ inalienable property rights in the capital. Trujillo has fought a rearguard action on this on the count of; if Telstra develops new technology, it is under the regulations immediately forced to supply the new equipment to other firms. There is nothing wrong with fighting this at all.

Consider it. You develop new comms equipment for business or consumers and it is others who get to reap greater profits because they get to reduplicate that which they did not have to invest from development to production.  You would, rightly, jump on toes, legs and arms of politicians and bureaucrats for overthrowing your property rights and demolishing the value of the capital you have sunk - because the expected future earnings stream has been sliced a-priori, on the strength of nothing more than the diktat of capricious nobodies. Trujillo cannot be attacked for defending the property of investors on this count.

The departure point is the problem that Rudd’s farcical con cannot resolve, the ‘last mile’. Rudd taxing Australians for an initial liability of $42 billion (before future costs) to install fibre optic line as the answer to Telstra’s copper cable misses the problem by hundreds of miles. It is also why the Right are wrong, as typified by an article by Alan Moran in the Institute of Public Affairs‘ IPA Review:

Where’s the breadth of vision in Rudd’s broadband plan?

First, to observe, Moran is right in stating,

With the $43 billion allocated to the fibre-to-the-home network, Rudd claims to be saving us from the global financial crisis by boosting demand as well as providing infrastructure for a more productive tomorrow.

What informs Rudd’s plan is the consumption fallacy, which is problematic because the Right also adhere to it: consumption drives economic growth.

If it did, why do firms bother raising capital funds and those who extend them, savers supply entrepreneurs? Consumer spending should do the work, and this is what Rudd’s con assumes. Iff he and Swann were consistent, they would not be plotting to relieve taxpayers of billions of dollars, for by some miracle consumers alone will bring it into being.

It is no mere crack, because there is no grip on capital theory but this doesn’t disturb Rudd. The Right are voids in capital theory too, so he cannot be disturbed. By Jove, the likes of Professor Sinclair Davidson, Chris Berg, Greg Lindsay, Nicholas Gruen, and others are corkingly funny. It, capital theory, has further devastating force, which will be footnoted below.

Where Moran is astray is two counts. The first, as above, Telstra the monopoly was not cured by ‘privatisation’ and the assumption informing this, the fiction of perfect competition.  The second is, the problem of the last mile:

The discussion paper on national broadband is little more than a thinly veiled proposal to force Telstra to disgorge its copper network and divest its Foxtel system or to otherwise co-operate with the Government on pain of facing regulatory discipline…

Any board must be ultra-cautious about investing in a facility that faces subsidised new competition, government hostility and punitive pricing regimes. Telstra’s fixed-line investment as a result of these factors has remained low and is falling. This has brought about a deterioration in the Australian service, which is likely to accelerate as a result of the intensified attack by the Government on the main private sector provider…

With a government business there is a great temptation to shut out competitive solutions - after all, it will be argued, we need critical mass to ensure economies of scale.

This will leave us hostage to a system that might be technologically bypassed but which will be shielded from competition to preserve the government monopoly.

What Moran assumes is; firms will not invest in capital that is open to freeloaders, in this case the latter are competitors, real or potential, of Telstra. Samuelson committed the same mistake, assuming the conclusion, when he asserted ships would not pay for U.K. lighthouses. Ships do pay for lighthouses and the reason is, shipping firms concern to protect ships and cargoes from destruction, and a genuine humanitarian concern it is too.

Even better, while it is speculative, ships’ insurers might also have paqid lighthouse firms for the service. The reason is straightforward, to minimise risk liabilities, and also for shipping firms, it keeps premiums down, illuminated by the return to the good old days of piracy on the high seas which is causing real headaches for insurers and insured.

Another example is Grand Central Station, New York. I can appreciate the likes of Rudd and the CIS, and IPA, assuming Government built it. No. It was railroad firms who jointly built it.

The reason was simple. They needed a station to connect their interstate rail services. It was to their considerable advantage to split the cost and build a single, shared station.  It was co-operation, without force, nor attempts to prevent it, to do it.  What, from te myth of perfect competition is said against co-operation between firms? It’s an offence, it is collusion, and firms must act blind. On this basis, those investments would not have been built because it would have eliminated to cut costs down to the bone. Likewise, it was firms who built the canals of England, to solve their logistics requirements.

Now, following Moran and Samuelson, no firm should have done that, on the assumption it ‘does not pay’. Train, ship and canal boat did/do pay. What happens at airports used by numbers of airlines! Notice something? What it means costs are kept as low as possible through the spread.

Joint investment in ‘the last mile’ of telecommunications, because telecommunications firms need it if they are to enter earnings the only way they can, connecting house and firm. We can say why, it is integral to the capital structure of firms.

The culprit is cost, due to Telestra’s monopoly over it. Telstra has no incentive to discover how to build line at lowest cost. It has every incentive to multiply costs, and exact punishing prices from other firms who might use it. Monopolies are not in the business of serving customers; they are about extraction high prices, for politicians. This is where Trujillo can be attacked for defending the indefensible.

Trujillo is asserting; without monopoly over the final mile, it will not be maintained, upgraded, and extended. That, Telstra’s share price will crumble with it. To the contrary, if telecommunications had developed in free market terms, there is the real consideration it would have been faster as well as at far lower cost than under Telecom-Telstra. That, Telstra might have realised far more valuable increases in capital as a consequence. What this means is the release of capital for new investments of higher value.

In Why copper was beaten Alan Koehler supplies some interesting comparisons, introducing them by observing:

…since Telstra put too high a price on its last-mile copper network, the customers decided to go elsewhere.

The nitty gritty of pricing and costs is telling:

…in Singapore. The Straits Times reported this week that 100Mbps residential services will be selling for $S75 a month or less ($81.50) from next year.

The firm that won the tender for a 100Mbps fibre network, Starhub, will be selling wholesale access to it for $S21 ($23) a month, which is much lower than SingTel currently charges for wholesale access to its copper (up to $S34 or $37 a month for 10Mbps services)

Trujillo is pinning some of the value of stock in Telstra to its capacity to extract monopoly prices. What should concern investors is interest, rate of earnings over time. This has been butchered by both major parties, as the price collapse on the last float of Telstra capital dramatically demonstrated (and I told friends and acquaintances not to purchase T3 for the reason and also because the Right and the Left believed they were entitled to extract a price far higher as a multiple of earnings).

There is no doubt about it, politicians and their advisers have abused investors in Telstra, badly, reflected in the heads of Telstra trying to compensate shareholders with high dividend payouts - but this shows, capital is being wasted, not effectively employed and that means all are losing, shareholders and customers. The irony is that this is all very damaging to Telstra over time. Why should investors stump up valuable capital to see it abused?

Not that it is entirely the fault of the heads of Telstra. In privatising Telstra, Left and Right couched it in regulations aimed at ensuring it remained a monopoly and the telling symptom is regulations aimed at forcing Telstra to destroy capital by subsidising consumers, inclusive of pseudo-business, and extracting revenues. They have all whipped up public passions over this, including the Right, as a number of their MPs have bluntly stated in Parliament. It has been entrenched by the aspect of the dirty floats of Telstra, with still after T3 politicians through Cabinet still exercising a controlling share in the company.Here, as only one instance, is a recent article on this serious matter:

Tensions between Telstra and Future Fund

According to The Australian Financial Review, senior figures from Telstra and the Future Fund met on March 30 where the Fund raised concerns for the telco’s strategy towards the federal government in the wake of its exclusion from the bidding process for the national broadband network.

Now, all this Trujillo properly objects to. He and the board simply desire to retain monopoly structure without the encumbering reasons why politicians impose them.

Be clear on this, I’m not attacking the integrity of Trujillo. There are those who do operate in free markets are irritable because of it, resent it. They believe in free market competition for all but their own; hence bouts of putsches for protectionist policies. Trujillo is working honourably for his company.

He’s pushing its interests, absent of a genuine free market structure of prices informing action and company structure and scale, and quite enjoy watching Trujillo biffing politicians and bureaucrats. This involves matters that require Austrian school exponents. Australia is fortunate it has at least two of them, Mr. Jackson and Dr. Frank Shostak. I say, Mr. Manners and Mr. Clough, aren’t you a tad embarrassed by a false a purchase, your stables of studs - IPA and CIS are really geldings? Or, perhaps you were blinded by the sun and so couldn’t check for the obvious, whether they came equipped with balls.

Summation

The question of telecommunications today and into the future was generated not in recent years but in the lead up to ‘privatisation’. There was no solid intellectual examination and debate prior to ‘privatisation’. It was assumed that this was the market refounding of the monopoly and its correction.  Rudd’s telco con, if executed promises only greater damage, and as another bureaucratic, central planning approach to supplying telecommunications. Rudd and Swann have no way of discovering what is required, when, and the capital structure and its increase over time to develop it. It promises only greater confiscation and destruction of savings. This lunacy is rooted in the anti-intellectualism, arrogance, and conceit of the Right, who prsided over the non-free market mess.

I have raised the above because of an article I read some years ago, which I recollect in outline. It was published in The New Australian, by Mr. G. Jackson. In that article, Mr. Jackson examined ‘privatisation’ and raised considerations that challenged the assumptions behind the putsch for ‘privatisation’, given in the contrast to genuine free market reform of government monopolies. He made the central point, ‘privatisation’ does not necessarily end the monopoly. After all, the monopoly can retain its structure on that basis.

The assumption of the fiction of perfect competition compounds any errors in reasoning, which can cause great damage if applied. Indeed, the ‘privatisation’, as opposed to genuine free market reform of the Victorian Government monopolies in energy and water supply is testament to the danger today. Who did this, the Right under Kennett, as advised by the IPA and CIS. There was no debate and, because he is anti-intellectual and an economic illiterate, did not and could not consider the problems and the need of alternative sources of advice, matched by vigorous debate. He simply acted and the result, the dangers have been realised under Bracks and Brumby.

Alan Kohler wrote,Telstra needs real competition. This, from perfect competition fiction, is the myth if concentration is decisive. Look at it another way, there are other telcos already. Why aren’t they jumping in? The market is not a free market, and politicians and their advisers made sure of it. Consider what happens in a genuine free market:

Economic profits is a signal for investors and entrepreneurs to jump in and rectify the problem, inefficient supply. An entreprenuer in a free market seeing another’s costs being blown out, not serving customers, and making up earnings by piling up prices will jump in. In a free market, consequently, investors in the failure will sack those they employed to run their company and replace them with those who are competent to run capital in a free market. But, the telecommunications market is not a free market, leaving many Australians complaining of what summed up is the problem, Telstra is still a monopoly. The fight over the final mile is due to this.

Rudd’s con won’t correct the problem. What, replace an old monopoly with a new $42+ monopoly over the final mile. Worse, it not only contains the same problem, it means further massive distortions  in capital allocation in telecommunications and, considered, capital destruction. It entails an explosive cost blowout and not elimination and reduction. Where are the customers in all this. As badly abused as they are today, and more - forced to pay for the con and pay spiraling prices.

It’s not the final mile, its maintenance and development that is the problem. The mainstream media commentariat are missing this essential point, as also did the IPA. Canals, railways, and lighthouses demonstrate why. Companies can co-operate and pay for universal facilities and cut the costs of building them right down.  What Rudd is planning bears no relation to this. His plan is to have a firm or two execute what he will dictate to Australians.

$42 billions and bonds

How much in bonds does Rudd aim to ‘raise’?

Companies issue bonds to raise capital funds for maintenance and addition to production capacity. This is sound, based to the valuation of capital, priced according to expected future earnings. This is capital allocation in underlying assets. This is not what Rudd’s bond issue is. It is debt raising, another heavy tax burden imposed on some but not all Australians should it pass the Senate, to fund not capital investment but consumption.

The immediate burden will not be borne by those who purchase the bonds, in expectation of being paid interest and on the maturation of the bonds, the return of the principal they supplied to Rudd for his con. This a confiscation of wealth, savings, from many Australians, to some Australians - politicians, bureaucrats, and bond holders.

The road to pelf, however, is a rocky and dangerous one also for those who buy the bonds. The Cabinet can ‘pay’ the interest and on maturation the principal in several ways or a combination:

1. The sly tax of inflation, monetary expansion by forging money. As it is, how will Rudd pay for the now over $52 billion keynesian spend up? Print hundred dollar bills round the clock? Add on the $42 billion pluc telco plan and hey, he can buy the monolith money printing machine.

Oh, Glenn Stevens of the RBA could help him out, with new rounds of monetary expansion but even now it is hitting the skids. Monetary expansion creates the false impression real savings are far higher than they are. This is why some banks did not pass on  the laterst interest rate cut, and others only a fraction of it. Economic laws cannot be defied. Firms are not screaming out for financing for nothing.

2. Raise existing taxes. This would go down a treat with many already hard pressed Australians, and sack more precious capital.

3.  Compel Australians to use his grand NB and pay sky high prices for the ‘privilge’. I can see many Australians carting their telecommunications equipment off to the nearest garbage dump.

He’s plotting to issue bonds in nothing that exists, that will take a long time to build and what does that mean for earnings? When is it supposed to hit ‘earnings’. So, how are bond-holders to be paid out but by making many others poorer, assuming the bonds aren’t shredded by inflation.  It’s worse:

It also means taking capital away from sound production. This means further impoverishment of other Australians, shareholders to employees, and employees are shareholders through superannuation plans. Joy in the morning - buy a bond in a non-existent, pseudo business, watch the superannuation shrink in the afternoon and find a nice pay cut in the post in the evening. (Yes, I’m being sarcastic, it is not simplistic what occurs).

Not only is capital diverted, but capital formation is hampered, because it is capital that is taken from where it can be soundly used and so how is it to be replaced?  Since this is so, accumulation is inhibited. Look at what is happening. Rudd plans to pile up debt and indulge in a spending spree. Take with all his grand plans, including carbon taxes, the Rudd Cabinet can ruin the vast majority of Australians and what do the Right say but:

‘Yay! Go ahead. Grind the serfs into the dust’ , as Greg Lindsay and his CIS, and the Kemps and their IPA through Professor Sinclair Davidson and Chris Berg have made very plain. If Manners and Clough reckon this is defending free markets, good luck. Though,

In acts of hypocrisy.

Janet Albrechtsen asks, “where is Australia’s P.J. O’Rourke”, in;

Rudd flouts rules with market play.

One of her objections to Rudd’s grand plan for communications is lawlessness. This is difficult since the Right are all for ‘positive law’ and Costello wasted no time in ramming it down.

There are many objections to Rudd’s scheme and the Right is not equipped to draw them out and to devestating effect. One of the grave objections on the funding side is, and let’s leave it as a question for some to turn over, Rudd and Swann creating bonds. However, to answer Albrechtsen’s question:

Because talent has been buried by the likes of Albrechtsen who run a closed shop. However, she can consult meister guru economist Tiny Tim Blair, whose defence of capitalism has been so deadly he had Rudd and the Left rolling in the isles. Laughter can do that to a chap.

Con or Conned

Before Easter I came across a nugget, a little nugget but a nice find. Harold Clough is with Ron Manners concerned to advance the free market cause. Why then, do they both fund two entities who have not only caused great damage to the cause but, in truth, are anti-free market, the IPA and CIS? The first question is:

Are they conning Australians or have they been conned, or a mix of both?

Cui bono?

Manners’ agreeing to pick up Lindsay’s payroll tab for the toothless rottweiler poodle, John Humphreys, raises this question. It needs answering and I’m here to help uncover the answer.

The nugget is, Harold Clough was reading alternative material. Even better, he was carrying a copy of “The Labour Market Wars. This disturbed the top parasites responsible for the IPA and CIS, some of whom saw him with the volume in his hand. Needless to say, they smeared the title and the author. After all, they have one great mission in life: emptying the bank vaults of shareholders and wealthy men.

Another question: Why would Mr. Ron Manners reward Greg Lindsay and John Humphreys for lobbying for a tax that destroys capital, carbon taxation? Why would Mr. Clough reward the IPA and the CIS for the same treachery? This is, after all, Mr. Manners and Mr. Clough, far beyond the basic value for money the IPA and CIS provide -

Incompetence, ignorance in economics, and cowardice, and betrayal of principles that must be fought for.

Manners is a mining man. He has watched over decades States’ and Federal Governments strangle mining ventures, now at death’s door. Never have the IPA and CIS fought against the governments or, truthfully, politicians. They aided and abetted them. What politicians have not finished off, carbon taxes will erase.

Mr. Harold Clough must be aware of the future for oil, gas, construction and the engineering company his family built, Clough Ltd, a company he spent the best years of his life working for, under carbon taxation. He must agree, it is non-existent. Surely Mr. Clough is fully apprised of the evidence rolling in from other countries.

The question of Mr. Manners, conning or conned, is a matter of whether he’s been conned by Lindsay, or something else. Ron Walker, Hugh Morgan, and de Crespigny, hope to be made wealthier from the destruction of coal based power and Federal Government transfer billions of dollars from firms and modest earners into their ‘nuclear power plant’. It means, obviously, the destruction of southern coal mines, in favour of northern uranium mines. Walker, Morgan and de Crespigny also hope to clean up from uranium waste disposal to mining operations.

Has Mr. Manners, as a mining man, been got at by this lot of thugs? Does Mr. Manners see in it hope for survival of mining firms? How does Mr. Manners see selling out Australians’ inalienable rights, their immiseration, and destruction of capital as defence of free markets. In what way is all this good for Australians and their future?

Oh, don’t mistake me, I’m not questioning Mr. Manner’s decency. Is it, then, his judgement that is faulty? It is the wrong question. Let’s see.

Greg Lindsay of the CIS and the Kemp Family of the IPA give Mr. Manners:

• Fashionable photo opportunities. A real splash - “Mr.Manners is seen with Michael Kroger and Mr. Clough at the IPA’s gala annual gala gabfest seminar.” Some cynic might object; Mr. Manners has been cheated. Where are the the pics on the rear end of the Herald Sun.

• IPA and CIS proudly advertise their payroll is partly covered by the Mannkal Foundation. This enhances Mr. Manners reputation as a philanthropist. The irony is, Mr. Kerry Packer was charitable, having given a fortune away. Only some of his recipients have come to notice through generalised gossip modest people in difficulty and childrens’ hospitals. Packer was very tight-lipped about helping people.

It’s not clear that Mr. Manners is given the consideration his funding of those dens of parasites deserves. I mean to say:

Mr. Harold Clough has been awarded a Directorship of the IPA, and annual IPA lectures named in his honour. What a feast they are. ‘Bovinous grovelling and buttering up Clough exercises’; does not do them justice. Try; putrefied, inane grovelling buttering up.

Look, Mr. Clough, some of the toughest bastards on the political block appreciated real men of letters. Between executions, butchering rioters, quashing rebellions, and wiping out hostile kings and barbarians, Roman emperors had time for the greats of Latin and Greek letters. In view of how ferocious emperors could be, it paid to be bloody good and even then … well, put it this way; it didn’t save Cicero. Mr. Clough, you could assist a genuine poet laureate for far less.

What, Mr. Manners and Mr. Clough, is it all about? The IPA and CIS have never been active but for one exception, advocating carbon taxation, compounded by the Chris Berg – Professor Sinclair paper calling for industry policy and carbon taxation.

Is monetary policy destroying the country’s manufacturing base?

The article is widely read and yet Berg and Sinclair refuse to answer the criticisms that shred their ‘paper’. This is the standard of intellectual integrity and courage Manners and Clough support. The sums they have poured into the IPA and CIS accounts has entrenched intellectual fraud and sell out. This is before considering the rubbish poured out by not only the CIS, but Greg Lindsay on Co2 taxes through his attack parrott, John Humphreys.

They fill their ‘magazines’ with trite little items, supplemented with more inanities published in papers such as The Age ”The Spencer Street Soviet”, to the joy of diseased Leftists, and wave them in front of donors saying, ‘This is what we are doing already. Imagine what we could really do if you gave us millions more.’

The joke is, Mr. Manners and Mr. Clough, it takes nothing to fight. If you, gentlemen, genuinely desire to fight, here’s a suggestion:

Supply some website machinery and invite guns to use them and develop them as on-line, free to readers publications. There is more to this than meets the eye, but if you, gentlemen, wish to perceive why, I point to how the Left use the Internet. Let’s put it another way via a case. Dr. Aaoron Oakley, a scientist, who has shown he can fight in public, offered his services pro bono to IPA, who promptly refused them and it is clear why.

Making the IPA’s conceit and stupidity all the more risible is, Oakley demonstrated what all those happy to fight do; they do from principles, and not for money. It has not occurred to me to beg either and I would never seek it, contrary to Lindsay’s pet Liar, John Humphreys in comments. The Oakley case was related in an article on Brookesnews.

So, which is it, Mr. Manners, Mr. Clough; are you conning Australians or have been conned by Greg Lindsay and the Kemps and their associates. Or, having been conned, now go along with the con? For what? To feel good? Vanity has swallowed the free market motivation of Clough and Manners.

Over the Easter retreat, a Leftist journalist commented on Costello, “he’s a whiner”. The journalist is female. She was referring to a column by Costello in The Age aka the “Spencer Street Soviet”. The “whine” is about how unfair the press is to him. Peter Costello was only being true to form, as observed before -

‘… look what happened the last time Leftists called Peter and Michael Kroger names:

When Peter was an undergraduate and member of the Monash University ALP club. Peter cried crocodile tears and complained to ALP machine heavies. They gave him a hanky and told him to nick off. He did, to the misery of the genuine Liberal Party. The ALP club members gave Costello and Michael Kroger what for, for being a pair of whining cretins who couldn’t get their own way and ratting.’

Costello and Kroger varnished the incident, pretending they had engaged in bloody warfare against the hard Left, putting themselves on the same plane as B.A. Santamaria, who did risk his life in real fighting the hard Left.

In the column, Costello cited Belinda Neal, and trivialised Iguanagate,

How immoral, to hold the wrong views (15/4/09).

Having alluded to it in, The real Kevin Rudd, and he is not fit to be Prime Minister, for recapitulation here is the case,

Scoop: New Development in Iguanagate

Costello puts what transpired, and Rudd’s  abuse of a RAAF member, down to bad manners. He asserts the disgust and outrage against what not only Belinda Neal did but also the subsequent actions of the N.S.W. Cabinet and Police, who did treat the victims as criminals, was due to one thing only:

She was on the political down in NSW, and hence a millstone around Rudd’s neck. Out of favour. It was all part of the PR stakes race and Neal had fallen far behind. To buttress this, he points to himself, whining ‘I’ve been unfairly treated by the Press too’. Further, he reflected on his adviser, why he didn’t come up with good ideas to improve his Press.

What! With Andrew ‘ethanol man’  Bolt, Tiny Tim Blair, Janet Albrechtsen, the Devines, the CIS and IPA, and the rest, all of them could not make Costello appear to smell sweater than the subtlest rose. Yes, that’s enough to make a grown man cry. As for his staffers, never mind being the economic ignoramus he truly is, Costello did not use the taxpayers’ money to hire people with brains; it’s all about good PR. Forget long suffering modest Australians, Costello was “dudded”.

Never mind spitting on the former staff of the iguana club; there’s nothing wrong at all with lawless politicians, bureaucrats, and police. After all, Peter Costello, demonstrating his great learning in law, declared ‘positive law’ is the rule of law. Let’s quote again a distinguished jurist:

Lord Mansfield’s 1772 judgement:

The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.

The rule of thugs, and Costello and the Rest of the Right in Victoria are all for it. Oh, one is not saying deliberately so, because this assumes two things:

1. Some sign of neuronal activity.

2. They once possessed a moral compass to smash.

The Right, and advised by the clowns in the CIS and IPA, converted Victoria into Vic. Inc., and this was the foundation for what came next, Brackistan. The Right in Victoria, through Kroger’s demolition of the Liberal Party, supported the anti-bill of Rights, the Blasphemy Law, and other measures overthrowing inalienable property rights that Common Law asserts not only against ordinary thugs, but also against politicians and Cabinets. The large scale, criminal racket into which the OPA and STO were converted by the Right is but one appalling instance of the Right’s contempt for real rights and of modest Australians. The Right show fangs when only they are hurt.

To draw things out further, here’s The Lord Nag Robert Doyle’s latest response to the exponentially increasing violent crimes by dangerous thugs:

1. Yesterday, on radio, Doyle announced he will use the Gotham City Plan. He will have bouncers in bars dressed like Batman and Robbin, done up in body hugging luminescent suits. This, the hero declared, will tell dangerous criminals, ‘here is the law’. No doubt they will carry flash cards reading, “Biff! Wham!! Blam!!!” Criminals will done neon suits too, in the same garish colours worn by the likes of The Penguin, and equipped with a complete set of “dark-side” Dick and Dora flashcards.

This morning, His Nagness announced an addition to his original plot. The bouncers and crims will alternate. One evening they will reproduce the Batman comic script, the next they will be World Cup soccer players. Bar staff will wander around rooms and issue yellow and red cards. No doubt vermin wielding knives will observe the expected etiquette of obeying referees as they stab hapless bystanders.

I won’t contemplate what penalties, particularly shooting at goals, would involve, and suspensions. But what the heck, there is already a stadium built for this “Ocker” version of soccer, Federation Square. Now Melbournians are told why this monstrosity was built.

2. Doyle’s response to the violence of the CFMEU was to say, both parties have to calm down and resolve their differences, so the City can function. A mere fishwives spat that could be resoled over tea and biscuits and a nice chat. Men and their families have been threatened, assaulted and pursued by the thugs and that is all Doyle has to make of it.

An officer of John Holland on radio this morning pointed out that they cannot pay already highly paid labour higher rates. What he didn’t pin is, Holland is already paying the market rate. The CFMEU wants to extract far more. Behind this is the Right’s complete destruction of the fight for free labour markets through worse than lousy economics ( I won’t grace what they put up by adding, theory).

It is reflects also the Right’s, and not just the Left’s, suppression of Common Law in favour of ‘positive law’. The punch is, economic action is the ground of law, and the root is inalienable property rights.

What a contrast to the Right. Here are some Leftists who are chilled to the marrow by the actions of the CMFEU:

ORGANISED CRIME: CFMEU pays Geelong bikies $1000 per week to picket West Gate Freeway upgrade

Not to forget either -

UNION OF SLEAZE: The health of sick kids jeopardised by CFMEU greed

I listened to what obviously Vex had also heard -

DEMON DIALLER: Convicted thug Craig Johnston calls 3AW to deny thuggery at West Gate picket, blames “Tongans”

Neil Mitchell also holds the solution is a nice chat over a cup of tea.

The descent of Victoria into violence isn’t a recent a development. It has been a long descent and both the Right and the Left are culpable for it. Peter Costello’s contempt for the modest man and their inalienable rights is a stark indication of why. As for Kroger’s finger puppet, Robert Doyle, he is showing every reason why he was never fit to sit in the State Parliament, let alone be considered as Premier material.

Yes, Peter Costello, young Mr. Gollo and the other former staff were treated to real institutionalised thuggery because ignoramuses such as Costello have not merely made it possible. Positive law is lawless thuggery, and puts its beneficiaries (politicians et al) above the law and the black irony is: It is violence against the rule of law and the inalienable rights of modest Australians. But the Right, and not just the diseased Left, hold modest Australians in contempt. Let’s end this with an anecdote from the Easter break:

As their response to the recession, the types who have wrecked the Liberal Party, are making a grand gesture. For the Easter break, instead of nice hotels and B&Bs. they booked out caravan sites. These are the modest man’s holiday retreats. One retired army man (a Vietnam veteran too) I was enjoying a good natter with mused:

“You should see them. Women in expensive outfits, putting on make-up. But I know what it is. They reckon I’m Brad Pitt.”

I quipped back, “I can tell by all the lipstick on your cheeks they are convinced you are Brad Pitt.’ His wife decided to put him on a leash (only jesting).

I suppose so many of them booked caravan parks, there was no room for smelly serfs. It showed. The only stinks there was the stink of make-up and after-shave.

The army man said they were making life irritating for the modest man. Holding up showers for one thing as they did their full make-up routines, and ran the water cold. They made it very difficult for anyone else to use the facilities; “prima donnas in action”.

Soon, no doubt, they will have the dog kennel builder to Toorak Doctors’ wives, Ted Baillieu, render caravan sites more to their taste, and right out of reach of modest earners and their families. After all, serfs and retreats don’t mix, like several tons of litter on nice, swept, clean sand.

What were they doing? Saving pocket money? Or was it their typical false sympathy for the modest man ‘”We are just like you”. Don’t ordinary Liberal Party members (most ex members now) know it.

Greg Lindsay appointed his pet thug, John Humphreys, as another of his economic gurus. There are those speculating this is the pay-off for the thug who carried the public can for Greg Lindsay’s propaganda-lobbying articles pushing for carbon taxes, on behalf of certain interests connected to Lindsay.

The Identity of “ESS” revealed

I had made a genuine mistake in identifying the editor of the IPA Review, Mr. Chris Berg, as “ESS” in, The masked crusader, ESS, unmasked. I subsequently issued a public apology to Mr. Berg. All who have read the correspondence with Berg, though can be assured, Mr. Berg’s expression is on a par with the real “ESS”. ESS is John Humphreys.

Berg’s IPA and CIS pals supported Berg in response to “The masked Crusader”. It was transparent from their remarks that they know “ESS”.  Now I have helped them out by naming “ESS” to, no doubt, their discomfort. For, while Greg Lindsay is not embarrassed by his useful idiot thug, Berg’s pals are definitely embarrassed by the antics of Humphreys; abandoning him as Lindsay’s public face for carbon taxes was more than telling.

Shortly before Easter, Greg Lindsay proudly announced his appointment of Humphreys as the Mannkal Scholar/Research Fellow on the staff his super fund the CIS.

The Mannkal Foundation was established by Mr. Ron Manners, who is genuinely concerned to see the free market cause defended, to give the grounding and preparation of new, young talent required to defend the free market cause. The difficulty is, he chained it to the IPA and CIS. I warned Mr. Manners the only ‘talent’ that would be promoted are the inmates of these dens of incompetent, ignorant, intellectual frauds. So it has transpired.

Mr. Manners is funding the CIS and IPA. Two pseudo-free-market think tanks that have only caused great damage to the cause of free markets. Two bolted bunkers infested by cowards who tremble in fear when Leftists even mutter”boo” at them. As for the CIS, they have ceased pretending to defend free markets altogether, as Lindsay’s full support for capital destroying carbon taxes, and utilising the CIS to this end shows. Now the final indignity of Mr. Manners’ Foundation being sacked to pay Greg Lindsay’s lying little, pet thug.

Mr. Manners has admitted the CIS and IPA are worse than incompetent and feeble. How much abuse will he endure before he will cut the funds to those buffoons? I mean to say, Mr. Manners, Lindsay puts his poodle onto permanent staff and makes you pick up the payroll charge?!

A toy dog that only barks from behind a locked gate and poops all over the garden is what Greg Lindsay appointed as the CIS’ new economics gun. Is it a Halloween stunt or an April Fool’s joke Lindsay has pulled? Which is it, Mr. Manners - as in, how do you take abuse, for that is what it boils down to.

Perhaps I’m mistaken. Mr. Manners could be a philanthropist who enjoys supporting very disturbed, treacherous cretins. This is wrong. Mr. Manners, these clowns cannot be helped. They will never recover from their condition. What you are doing Mr Manners is encouraging them to cause even greater damage in grave matters that have great force for millions of Australians.

This, readers, is the introduction of concentrated attention on the IPA and CIS. It will be picked up tomorrow and carried through.

Later than planned, obviously, made a tad more difficult  by the storm this morning, which entailed further delays as we had to repair some damage. Not serious but it had to be done, v. early in the morning. With a long drive back into Melbourne, this mean another delay, to catch up on a bit more sleep before getting in behind the steering wheel. Apologies, readers.

A couple of things have popped up and now that it is Easter…

Easter is not the season for blood sport. So, postings shall be resumed on either Monday the 13 th of Arpil or Tuesday the 14th.

I shall resume engagement onl Monday/Tuesday with gusto. Until then, thankyou readers.

Douglas.

With the IPA’s editor, Mr. Chris Berg. The point to this is not about Berg, as the following comments make plains. Mr. Berg is incidental, a minor figure. The correspondence, initiated by me, is published unedited, without any comment, and entire below in “Continued”.

Mr. Berg has simply given us another demonstration of the right’s contempt for ordinary Australians, just as Sinclair Davidson did when he insulted Jackson.

It’s unfortunate but true that our so-called right-wing would rather see the country sink than admit they don’t have all the answers. In their warped view any outsiders with valuable insights are seen as a threat. Thus they regard Mr. Jackson. To acknowledge others would be for them to admit failure. This is very immature, and it is most unfortunate because of the very grave matters Australians face that require principle, stiff resolve and ability to fight.

It also confirms, due to their warped view, Mr. Jackson is black-banned. This, some readers can recollect from an earlier item, was confirmed by none other than Mr. Tim Blair, over the Internet. Mr. Blair, to repeat, also called for Mr. Jackson to be black-banned and demanded that Mr. Jackson’s economics magazine, Brookesnews, be shutdown. It’s a peculiar notion of fighting the Left, and lousy Government policies, calling for the suppression of a fine economist who fights and to geat effect, and the only  economics news magazine in Australia that carries the fight accurately and with force.

There is no need to reflect on the matter of freedom of speech, and freedom of the Press. Mr. Blair has explained things rather well. Mr. Blair’s support for censorship of talent was expressed during a session of the HR Nicholls Society. A number of members expressed the sentiment, and more besides. The HR Nicholls Society does have form, having ensured no alternative, sound advice reached Prime Minister and Cabinet, on Labour Market Reform.

Kroger, Senator Minchin, Moore and Evans were pivotal in choking sources of advice but their own. Both Minchin and Kroger were given material needed, including The Labour Market Wars. In Senator Minchin’s case, this was nothing less than a breach of his oath sworn, honour bound duty as a Parliamentarian, and Cabinet Minister. This is all of a piece that yields a reasonably comprehensive picture, with depth in detail, of the Right. There is a pattern to their conduct.

Some readers are unsure as to why one attacks the right, and with venom. I trust that what is related in the items to follow this number, the correspondence with Berg, clarifies the reason with clarity. The Rudd Cabinet will cause great damage to Australia, even without Co2 taxation. The Rudd Cabinet is in office because of the Right-wing clique that has crippled the Liberal Party. The Victorian Division cannot even be called the Liberal Party; it does not exist, there is only the Right-wing Clique Party in Australia.

They have reduced Victorian Division and its Consitution to their rubber stamp. Though holding no executive office, Kroger is the Clique’s agent contolling totally the Division. It is why the Victorian Parliamentary wing, State and Federal, is a farce and faces elimination in both Parliaments.

There is no Opposition to the Left, because of the Clique. Their think tanks entrench their position, by on the one hand firmly impressing upon the voters the falsehood of identification of the genuine Liberal cause and genuine Free Market economics with them. On the other hand, by acting against talent.

The consequences are already catastrophic, and yet there is still the fight against carbon taxation in the balance. If this is lost, Australians face even greater hardships, and very serious dangers. This fight is not over but the Right have caused so much damage that it is nearly lost to the Left. There can be no greater damage than the Right compounding their less than respectable economic grip by supporting Greens polcies and Carbon taxation. Thankyou Mr. Doyle, Ted Baillieu, Ian Campbell, Malcolm Turnbull, and Michael Kroger’s new ‘man’ in Canberra, Reg Hunt.

I thank Mr. Berg for his candour and his request that the correspondence be published (as expressed in his final reply). It had never occurred to me to do this. Though reluctant to do so, the signal importance of the material that Mr. Berg is correct.

I initiated the exchange on the 20^th of March, 2009. It is over two periods.

(Continued)