Terror terminology in the firing line
Paul Maley
The Australian
July 07, 2009
IT'S official: The war on terror is over.
Nearly eight years after New York's World Trade Centre twin towers fell and US president George W.Bush stood amid the smoking rubble and vowed revenge, the phrase "war on terror" has been officially dropped from the Australian government lexicon.
The dumping of the phrase, criticised as a non-sequitur because terrorism is a tactic, not an entity, is part of a campaign by the Rudd government to change the way we talk about terrorism.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland yesterday launched the national rollout of "project lexicon", a joint study on the language surrounding terrorism.
Mr McClelland said the study, to be conducted with Victoria Police, the Victorian government and the Australian Multicultural Foundation, was part of a broader strategy aimed at countering radicalisation of young Muslim men.
Mr McClelland said several of the words or phrases used to describe terrorism had the inadvertent effect of glorifying violent criminal behaviour. He said rather than framing terrorism as a struggle by describing it as a "war" or "jihad", acts of terror should be described as serious criminal acts usually directed at innocent civilians.
"The general theme (of the research) is anything that suggests a war of cultures or religions," Mr McClelland told The Australian. "So the expression 'war on terrorism' has been identified as one that suggests that if you engage in acts of violence you're a soldier participating in that war."
Mr McClelland said the research into various hot-button terms would be a precursor to a discussion with the Muslim community and the media about how to describe terrorism. The aim would not be to proscribe the use of certain forms of language, Mr McClelland said; rather to make the media aware of the research.
Mr McClelland said Australia lagged behind other parts of the world in its counter-radicalisation activities. With the terror threat increasingly likely to be home-grown - rather than imported by al-Qa'ida or its various surrogates - this was potentially dangerous.
"I think a lot of good work has been done in Australia in terms of developing law enforcement capability, intelligence capability and, indeed, the legal framework," Mr McClelland said.
"But I think the area of countering violent extremism has been neglected."
Mr McClelland said the pugnacious language employed by the Howard government and the Bush administration was counterproductive.
He contrasted the combative approach of Mr Bush and John Howard to Barack Obama's speech in Cairo last month in which he called for dialogue between the Muslim world and the West. "(That) had far more impact in terms of the election of moderates, or a greater number of people prepared to vote for moderates, in both Iran and southern Lebanon," he said.
Rudd and his left wing loon pals can call Islamic Terrorists,their acts of terrorism and the threat's to destroy Western Judeo / Christian civilization any touchy feely name they like, however, calling Muslim Terrorists and their acts of Terrorism what they are NOT will, like the Burka, only hide their identities, but I guess that is what this latest act of treachery is all about.
If Rudd and his cabal of left wing loons believe that "come the revolution" they will be getting a "get out of jail card" from their Muslim pals, in exchange for the assistance rendered to these Anti Christ's they are in for a rude shock,the useful idiots are the first against the wall or to lose their heads, after all, no one trusts a traitor.
An American, Australian ,Israeli, British "Judeo Christian Friendly " blog.
Anthropogenic Global Warming SCAM
Showing posts with label economic disaster International Socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic disaster International Socialism. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Far Left Extremist Multicultural Australian Taxpayer funded TV Station reports on Geert Wilders election victory
These taxpayer funded SBS Multicultural arse clowns are simply the best when it comes to delivering un biased news stories... not. Like it's big sister,the Australian taxpayer funded,Australian Broadcasting Corporation,ABC,it is simply a propaganda arm of the Australian Labor party, ALP, the ALP's fundraisers and bankers,the Australian Council of Trade Unions,ACTU and International Socialism's world head quarters the United Nations.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Pravda mourns the "American decent into Marxism"
American capitalism gone with a whimper
Pravda
27.04.2009
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina
From 1963
Communist Goals (1963)
Documention below
Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De
Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt
from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:
[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental healthclinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Pravda
27.04.2009
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina
From 1963
Communist Goals (1963)
Documention below
Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De
Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt
from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:
[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental healthclinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Rudd's Australia: Australian economy tanks while Rudd spends,spends, spends
The world is noticing Comrade Rudd's incompetence.
The Australian economy tanks while government debt and spending zooms
Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 31 May 2009
If Obama and his lefty mates had half the brains they pathetically think they have they would be keeping a close eye on the UK and Australia. Obama's 'economic policy' of spend, borrow and print the stuff — and keep on doing it — was also the policy of the British Labour Government. Thanks to that economic stupidity Britain is now on the brink of financial ruin and the economy is expected to contract this year by something like 4 per cent. The Australian economy is also continuing to contract despite Prime Minister Rudd's outrageous spending binge that has sent the country deep into the red for years to come.
The problem — as always — is one of lousy economics. While our economic punditry focus on consumer spending and fiscal policy they have completely overlooked the monetary situation. All the inflation indicators have been slowing since last September while M1 has been basically flat since May 2009.
Moreover, the decline in the Reserve's assets has accelerated. The latest monetary figures (they are always about two months behind) show that from February to March M1 actually contracted. In short, monetary policy is very tight.
When monetary policy tightens this should result in a slowdown in production, falling investment, rising in unemployment and a contraction in import volumes. (Westpac calculates that import volumes dropped by about 14 per cent over the Q4 and Q1). The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of
Statistics show that spending on equipment fell by 10.8 per cent in the March quarter. This is the biggest drop since this survey started in 1987. To get a better idea of how bad the situation is we need to look at manufacturing figures. The May Australian Industry Group report for April revealed that manufacturing had been contracting for eleven straight months. Australia is clearly in recession and has been for sometime.
Regardless of what the economic commentariat believes, manufacturing is a key indicator — not consumer spending. Focusing on the latter leads to confusion. Rudd's $8.4 billion cash handout represented about 3 per cent of GDP. Not surprisingly retail sails jumped by 1 per cent in the first quarter. We could get a repeat performance when most of Rudd's additional $12.7 billion injection is released in the second quarter.
As I have stressed many times before, consumer spending is only about one-third of total spending. Failure to recognise this fact comes from the fallacy that to include spending between firms in the national accounts would be double-accounting. (Businessmen are genuinely surprised when I tell them this).
Therefore it is not consumer spending but total business spending that should be monitored. Once this is realised it becomes obvious that the Australian economy went into recession last year and is still tanking. There is no way that running down the surplus and increasing government debt could have stopped this process. And there is certainly no way these policies can reverse the economy's direction. Given the Reserve's monetary stand fiscal policy in the form of greater government spending is powerless.
Treasury and Reserve officials are at a loss to explain the situation, something that Ric Battelino, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, made clear when he asserted that the principal reason for the difference between the sickly state of business and the current state of the housing market is the significant difference in borrowing costs, with the variable mortgage averaging 5.16 per cent while — according to Alan Kohler of the Business Specator — "the current borrowing rate for non-financial companies is 7.29 per cent".
However, since similar differences in borrowing rates exist in the US and Europe the Treasury can scarcely assert with a straight face that Australia occupies a unique position in this respect. The difference is easily explained. Firstly, as already noted, recession strikes at manufacturing first* and hence its effects will be first felt in business spending and not in consumption. In fact, consumption can continue to rise even as a recession deepens. This happened during the recession that Bush inherited. This means that any differences between borrowing rates for business and borrowing rates for housing are irrelevant.
Secondly, the government has used subsidies and low interest rates to maintain the level of Australian house prices regardless of business conditions. It's true that the US has done likewise but unlike America's utterly reckless Democrats neither the Labor Party nor the Liberal Party bullied lending institutions into giving mortgages to people who were patently unable to afford them.
Furthermore, several things need to be noted about housing. There is no housing market as such. What we have are a very large number of housing markets.
Houses in Endeavour Hills are not the same as houses in Toorak. Even within suburbs one can find a number of housing markets. Finally, it should be obvious that one cannot compare one country's 'market for housing' with that of another. Supply and demand conditions will always differ.
Mr Battelino is self-evidently clutching at straws.
*Housing too can be indicator because of its sensitivity to changes in interest rates. However, this sensitivity can evidently be blunted where mortgage rates are kept low.
Gerard Jackson is Brookesnews' economics editor
The Australian economy tanks while government debt and spending zooms
Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 31 May 2009
If Obama and his lefty mates had half the brains they pathetically think they have they would be keeping a close eye on the UK and Australia. Obama's 'economic policy' of spend, borrow and print the stuff — and keep on doing it — was also the policy of the British Labour Government. Thanks to that economic stupidity Britain is now on the brink of financial ruin and the economy is expected to contract this year by something like 4 per cent. The Australian economy is also continuing to contract despite Prime Minister Rudd's outrageous spending binge that has sent the country deep into the red for years to come.
The problem — as always — is one of lousy economics. While our economic punditry focus on consumer spending and fiscal policy they have completely overlooked the monetary situation. All the inflation indicators have been slowing since last September while M1 has been basically flat since May 2009.
Moreover, the decline in the Reserve's assets has accelerated. The latest monetary figures (they are always about two months behind) show that from February to March M1 actually contracted. In short, monetary policy is very tight.
When monetary policy tightens this should result in a slowdown in production, falling investment, rising in unemployment and a contraction in import volumes. (Westpac calculates that import volumes dropped by about 14 per cent over the Q4 and Q1). The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of
Statistics show that spending on equipment fell by 10.8 per cent in the March quarter. This is the biggest drop since this survey started in 1987. To get a better idea of how bad the situation is we need to look at manufacturing figures. The May Australian Industry Group report for April revealed that manufacturing had been contracting for eleven straight months. Australia is clearly in recession and has been for sometime.
Regardless of what the economic commentariat believes, manufacturing is a key indicator — not consumer spending. Focusing on the latter leads to confusion. Rudd's $8.4 billion cash handout represented about 3 per cent of GDP. Not surprisingly retail sails jumped by 1 per cent in the first quarter. We could get a repeat performance when most of Rudd's additional $12.7 billion injection is released in the second quarter.
As I have stressed many times before, consumer spending is only about one-third of total spending. Failure to recognise this fact comes from the fallacy that to include spending between firms in the national accounts would be double-accounting. (Businessmen are genuinely surprised when I tell them this).
Therefore it is not consumer spending but total business spending that should be monitored. Once this is realised it becomes obvious that the Australian economy went into recession last year and is still tanking. There is no way that running down the surplus and increasing government debt could have stopped this process. And there is certainly no way these policies can reverse the economy's direction. Given the Reserve's monetary stand fiscal policy in the form of greater government spending is powerless.
Treasury and Reserve officials are at a loss to explain the situation, something that Ric Battelino, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, made clear when he asserted that the principal reason for the difference between the sickly state of business and the current state of the housing market is the significant difference in borrowing costs, with the variable mortgage averaging 5.16 per cent while — according to Alan Kohler of the Business Specator — "the current borrowing rate for non-financial companies is 7.29 per cent".
However, since similar differences in borrowing rates exist in the US and Europe the Treasury can scarcely assert with a straight face that Australia occupies a unique position in this respect. The difference is easily explained. Firstly, as already noted, recession strikes at manufacturing first* and hence its effects will be first felt in business spending and not in consumption. In fact, consumption can continue to rise even as a recession deepens. This happened during the recession that Bush inherited. This means that any differences between borrowing rates for business and borrowing rates for housing are irrelevant.
Secondly, the government has used subsidies and low interest rates to maintain the level of Australian house prices regardless of business conditions. It's true that the US has done likewise but unlike America's utterly reckless Democrats neither the Labor Party nor the Liberal Party bullied lending institutions into giving mortgages to people who were patently unable to afford them.
Furthermore, several things need to be noted about housing. There is no housing market as such. What we have are a very large number of housing markets.
Houses in Endeavour Hills are not the same as houses in Toorak. Even within suburbs one can find a number of housing markets. Finally, it should be obvious that one cannot compare one country's 'market for housing' with that of another. Supply and demand conditions will always differ.
Mr Battelino is self-evidently clutching at straws.
*Housing too can be indicator because of its sensitivity to changes in interest rates. However, this sensitivity can evidently be blunted where mortgage rates are kept low.
Gerard Jackson is Brookesnews' economics editor
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Rudd pays Dead people
Dead people and expats receiving stimulus package as well
EXCLUSIVE by Steve Lewis
The Daily Telegraph
May 28, 2009 12:00am
THE Rudd Government has wasted $40 million by paying the $900 tax bonus to 16,000 dead people and 27,000 expats living overseas.
The revelations will rock the Government's efforts to sell its $42 billion stimulus package as a nation-building scheme.
And the Australian Tax Office said the level of payments to the dead is likely to go beyond the $14 million so far issued to deceased estates.
The $40 million in wasted payments was revealed by the tax office in confidential documents that confirmed prisoners received the $900 payment.
As well, more than $11 million was spent on "marketing" the cash splash - which has seen about $8 billion paid to 8.7 million people.
Despite racking up more than $300 billion in debt, the Government is sending about $25 million in bonus payments to people living overseas.
Even non-Australians who worked here for at least six months - but then disappeared off shore - have received the cash.
The British and New Zealand economies will benefit the most - with expats living in these countries accounting for 40 per cent of the payments.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull will seize on the embarrassing revelations to bolster his claim the Government's $42 billion stimulus package was badly targeted.
Mr Turnbull - estimated to have a personal fortune of $178 million yesterday - called on the Government to "come clean" on how it planned to repay $315 billion in debt.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan trumpeted the $900 cash bonus - paid during April and May - as a much-needed shot in the arm for the economy.
The tax office has revealed that 15,934 tax bonus payments have been made to deceased estates so far.
The numbers of dead people receiving the bonus could rise sharply, with 47,111 deceased estates lodging a tax return for the eligible period.
The tax office also admits it had no idea where the payment to dead people actually ends up.
"It is the role of the executor in administering the proceeds of a deceased estate to determine how the tax bonus payment will be distributed to beneficiaries," the ATO said.
The tax office was also unable to outline how many prisoners had received the cash bonus, but confirmed "some" inmates would receive the payment.
It had much better luck in determining how many expats would receive the bonus.
This will include 7305 people who will receive a cheque mailed to an overseas address, while 18,000 will receive the payment via their bank account.
The Australian Labor Party, has since its inception, recruited Dead people to vote for it at all three levels of government,now we know how they do it.
EXCLUSIVE by Steve Lewis
The Daily Telegraph
May 28, 2009 12:00am
THE Rudd Government has wasted $40 million by paying the $900 tax bonus to 16,000 dead people and 27,000 expats living overseas.
The revelations will rock the Government's efforts to sell its $42 billion stimulus package as a nation-building scheme.
And the Australian Tax Office said the level of payments to the dead is likely to go beyond the $14 million so far issued to deceased estates.
The $40 million in wasted payments was revealed by the tax office in confidential documents that confirmed prisoners received the $900 payment.
As well, more than $11 million was spent on "marketing" the cash splash - which has seen about $8 billion paid to 8.7 million people.
Despite racking up more than $300 billion in debt, the Government is sending about $25 million in bonus payments to people living overseas.
Even non-Australians who worked here for at least six months - but then disappeared off shore - have received the cash.
The British and New Zealand economies will benefit the most - with expats living in these countries accounting for 40 per cent of the payments.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull will seize on the embarrassing revelations to bolster his claim the Government's $42 billion stimulus package was badly targeted.
Mr Turnbull - estimated to have a personal fortune of $178 million yesterday - called on the Government to "come clean" on how it planned to repay $315 billion in debt.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan trumpeted the $900 cash bonus - paid during April and May - as a much-needed shot in the arm for the economy.
The tax office has revealed that 15,934 tax bonus payments have been made to deceased estates so far.
The numbers of dead people receiving the bonus could rise sharply, with 47,111 deceased estates lodging a tax return for the eligible period.
The tax office also admits it had no idea where the payment to dead people actually ends up.
"It is the role of the executor in administering the proceeds of a deceased estate to determine how the tax bonus payment will be distributed to beneficiaries," the ATO said.
The tax office was also unable to outline how many prisoners had received the cash bonus, but confirmed "some" inmates would receive the payment.
It had much better luck in determining how many expats would receive the bonus.
This will include 7305 people who will receive a cheque mailed to an overseas address, while 18,000 will receive the payment via their bank account.
The Australian Labor Party, has since its inception, recruited Dead people to vote for it at all three levels of government,now we know how they do it.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Pauline Talty, Australia: Why Americans should think twice about Hussein's "Universal Health Care"
Pauline dudded of urgent treatment
Peter Dutton
News.com.au
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Pauline Talty – the woman surviving in Royal Prince Alfred as she fights for government assistance for a bowel transplant – has been badly let down by the health system that should be helping her.
Proud Australian's Pauline Talty and Leo Sayer.
Last week, more than five months after she first applied to the Medical Treatment Overseas Program to travel to America, MTOP funding was rejected for a second time.
Nicola Roxon’s health chiefs in Canberra say Pauline doesn’t qualify because transplant treatment is available at a hospital in Melbourne where, I might add, not one bowel transplant has yet been attempted.
The advice of four medical experts that Pauline should undergo a transplant in America has been discounted.
Pauline Talty has been dudded in this process.
The plain fact is she should have been approved for overseas treatment months ago and the health department’s own documents clearly show that.
Pauline first applied for help last October.
In November, the department officials were told that “intestinal transplantation is not” currently offered in Australia – which should have led to a positive decision for her.
In January the department was told again “no intestinal transplant has been performed…in Australia”, yet an initial decision,
confirmed last week, was made to reject her MTOP application.
It appears to have been made on the basis that transplants could be carried out here in the future; Pauline was in effect being told she would have to wait for that day to come, even though she might die in the meantime.
There appears to be significant inconsistencies in reports before the department.
I think it’s outrageous! Pauline Talty should already be receiving treatment in hospital in America.
Minister Roxon needs to show some gumption. Get involved and turn this decision around.
Rudd's Australia:More Illegals arrive at Barrow Island
Note ALL BLUE coloured TEXT represents the VIEWS of Aussie News & Views and NOT those of Peter Dutton, I have inserted the picture and the comments underneath the picture written in BLUE, Capisch?
Peter Dutton
News.com.au
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Pauline Talty – the woman surviving in Royal Prince Alfred as she fights for government assistance for a bowel transplant – has been badly let down by the health system that should be helping her.
Proud Australian's Pauline Talty and Leo Sayer.Pauline has been treated just as Australians would expect to be treated by their Socialist Government, she has been ABONDONED.
When you have socialised medicine the Government works on the fact that many,many of those requireing treatment will DIE before they make it to the "list" yes LIST, not the fricking operating table the bloody LIST,either from their medical condition or age.
Unlike hundreds of Illegal Islamic "refugees" who wash up on Australia's shores almost daily now since the Socialist Rudd government came to power in 2007,Pauline Talty is NOT able to access ANY of the "TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS " for instance,that has miracousily appeared to treat Middle Eastern Illegal immigrants, after they were badly burnt, after they voluntarialy set fire to their boat so as to ensure they were picked up by the Royal Australian Navy and taken to Australia's mainland,and take a seat on the Australian Labor Party's Islam, Refugee friendly, life time social security gravy train.
No expense has been spared for these criminals in treating them or providing them their every want and need so as not to offend their "Religious and Cultural sensitivities"
Pauline Talty however is neither a "refugee" or a "Muslim" she is one of the Australian Labor Party's most despised and reviled, she is an Australian.
Comrade Rudd and his Beijing / Marxist worshipping underlings that are his partys (Australian Labor Party, ALP) financiers, The Australian Council of Trade Unions, ACTU, see themselves as Internationalists first second and third, and as such have no time for Australians, least of all unwell Australians.
When you have socialised medicine the Government works on the fact that many,many of those requireing treatment will DIE before they make it to the "list" yes LIST, not the fricking operating table the bloody LIST,either from their medical condition or age.
Unlike hundreds of Illegal Islamic "refugees" who wash up on Australia's shores almost daily now since the Socialist Rudd government came to power in 2007,Pauline Talty is NOT able to access ANY of the "TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS " for instance,that has miracousily appeared to treat Middle Eastern Illegal immigrants, after they were badly burnt, after they voluntarialy set fire to their boat so as to ensure they were picked up by the Royal Australian Navy and taken to Australia's mainland,and take a seat on the Australian Labor Party's Islam, Refugee friendly, life time social security gravy train.
No expense has been spared for these criminals in treating them or providing them their every want and need so as not to offend their "Religious and Cultural sensitivities"
Pauline Talty however is neither a "refugee" or a "Muslim" she is one of the Australian Labor Party's most despised and reviled, she is an Australian.
Comrade Rudd and his Beijing / Marxist worshipping underlings that are his partys (Australian Labor Party, ALP) financiers, The Australian Council of Trade Unions, ACTU, see themselves as Internationalists first second and third, and as such have no time for Australians, least of all unwell Australians.
Last week, more than five months after she first applied to the Medical Treatment Overseas Program to travel to America, MTOP funding was rejected for a second time.
Nicola Roxon’s health chiefs in Canberra say Pauline doesn’t qualify because transplant treatment is available at a hospital in Melbourne where, I might add, not one bowel transplant has yet been attempted.
The advice of four medical experts that Pauline should undergo a transplant in America has been discounted.
Pauline Talty has been dudded in this process.
The plain fact is she should have been approved for overseas treatment months ago and the health department’s own documents clearly show that.
Pauline first applied for help last October.
In November, the department officials were told that “intestinal transplantation is not” currently offered in Australia – which should have led to a positive decision for her.
In January the department was told again “no intestinal transplant has been performed…in Australia”, yet an initial decision,
confirmed last week, was made to reject her MTOP application.
It appears to have been made on the basis that transplants could be carried out here in the future; Pauline was in effect being told she would have to wait for that day to come, even though she might die in the meantime.
There appears to be significant inconsistencies in reports before the department.
I think it’s outrageous! Pauline Talty should already be receiving treatment in hospital in America.
Minister Roxon needs to show some gumption. Get involved and turn this decision around.
Rudd's Australia:More Illegals arrive at Barrow Island
Note ALL BLUE coloured TEXT represents the VIEWS of Aussie News & Views and NOT those of Peter Dutton, I have inserted the picture and the comments underneath the picture written in BLUE, Capisch?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Australian Labor Party Rudd deserts a sinking Socialist ship for Obama's like thinking.
Labor party sells out
Piers Akerman
News.com.au
Saturday, March 21, 2009
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will be in his favourite place this week - that is, a long way from Australia.
In jetting off - again - he brings tomind the old joke that was told about former governor general and former foreign affairs minister Bill Hayden, and former prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke. In the routine, the three men were asked about their favourite sounds.
Hawke said it was an MCG-sized crowd cheering him, Keating said it was one of Mahler’s symphonies - and Hayden said it was the tinkling of ice as the drinks trolley rolled down the first-class aisle on a Qantas jet taking off for Europe.
The current Prime Minister could easily be substituted for Hayden, so long as no one mentioned alcopops.
Rudd leaves an Australia that, solely because of his Labor government’s policies, is going to suffer unnecessarily more grief in the current global fiscal stuff-up.
Australia had minimal exposure to the lunatic sub-prime mortgages that were introduced into the US as a sop to left-wing legislators from the Democratic Party, the Australian economy was in surplus when Rudd and his team of economic nincompoops came to office, Australia had a cushion in place that could have softened the reduction in international markets.
But Rudd and his neophyte economics team nominally headed by Treasurer Wayne Swan, but really run by Treasury head Ken Henry who has succumbed to the siren song of political power, have pulled all the wrong reins.
They talked down the economy when they should have been talking it up - but they were determined to attempt to smear the Howard-Costello team’s outstanding legacy in the process.
Inflation was the killer, they insisted.
It wasn’t. They were.
Now, as Kevin 747’s aircraft pumps out more carbon dioxide (thank goodness CO2 is good for the planet and essential for plant life and not the poisonous polluter Kevin claims it to be), his new IR legislation and his planned greenhouse bill will choke off Australian jobs.
But, as the advertisements used to say, there is more - however, in this case it’s not a nice set of steak knives. Rudd and his cohort have so depleted the nation’s savings that the federal Government is now planning to axe a central part of Labor’s health policy: the universality ofthe Medicare safety net.
Introduced by the Whitlam Labor government in 1973, the safety net has always enjoyed bipartisan support - until the arrival of the Rudd vandals in Canberra.
Rudd and his horde now wish to break that compact, despite a specific election promise backed by a flood of media statements he and current Health Minister Nicola Roxon both issued. In what will be one of the most disastrous attacks on the Australian families Rudd claims to champion, he will redefine who is rich and who is poor by introducing a form of means test at a time when household wealth is extremely transitory.
Families who save will be caught up in a pincer movement. If they safeguard their earnings to give themselves the security they desire in order to have children, they will find themselves too wealthy to benefit from Medicare.
Yet, when one member of the family stops working to stay home with their new children, their income will drop just at a time when they need to meet extra costs.
The chronically ill will be hit and unable to meet the cost of specialist care; the elderly will find themselves unable to get specialist care when it is needed, because of the lengthening waiting lists, and the younger people wanting to have families will find themselves excluded because both husband and wife work.
Under Rudd’s plan, hard-working couples would be denied the safety net because they’re too wealthy, but be able to access it once they’ve paid up - because they would then be poor.
It doesn’t make sense, any more than it does slugging self-funded retirees and removing them from self-sufficiency.
Particularly hit will be those families seeking to use IVF. This is no small percentage now. On the percentages, one child in every Sydney classroom is now the product of IVF treatment, which is responsible for the birth of 11,000 children a year.
When asked last week about his plans for cancer patients and young couples on IVF treatment, Rudd retreated into the meaningless gibberish he now resorts to whenever he is challenged in Parliamentary Question Time.
The closest the Rudd government has come to acknowledging its devious plan to dump the Medicare safety net came in the Senate when Queensland Labor Senator Joe Ludwig admitted that the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission “will do more work on the safety net’’.
Labor is committed to destroying jobs during the current economic downturn, now it has revealed that the health safety net is no longer sacrosanct.
Parliament is now on holiday until the May Budget session but there are many serious questions that need answering.
Jobs, health, and the lack of a strategic plan in Afghanistan where 10 Australian soldiers have now been killed in the war Kevin Rudd wanted to fight, as opposed to the Iraq conflict, which he wanted to run from and leave our allies in the lurch.
Watch our Prime Minister duck the hard issues during his press conferences over the next six weeks.
It’s not personal, it’s just politics, but the only sound Kevin wants to hear is the ice rattling on the drinks trolley on his own jet.
Piers Akerman
News.com.au
Saturday, March 21, 2009
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will be in his favourite place this week - that is, a long way from Australia.
In jetting off - again - he brings tomind the old joke that was told about former governor general and former foreign affairs minister Bill Hayden, and former prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke. In the routine, the three men were asked about their favourite sounds.
Hawke said it was an MCG-sized crowd cheering him, Keating said it was one of Mahler’s symphonies - and Hayden said it was the tinkling of ice as the drinks trolley rolled down the first-class aisle on a Qantas jet taking off for Europe.
The current Prime Minister could easily be substituted for Hayden, so long as no one mentioned alcopops.
Rudd leaves an Australia that, solely because of his Labor government’s policies, is going to suffer unnecessarily more grief in the current global fiscal stuff-up.
Australia had minimal exposure to the lunatic sub-prime mortgages that were introduced into the US as a sop to left-wing legislators from the Democratic Party, the Australian economy was in surplus when Rudd and his team of economic nincompoops came to office, Australia had a cushion in place that could have softened the reduction in international markets.
But Rudd and his neophyte economics team nominally headed by Treasurer Wayne Swan, but really run by Treasury head Ken Henry who has succumbed to the siren song of political power, have pulled all the wrong reins.
They talked down the economy when they should have been talking it up - but they were determined to attempt to smear the Howard-Costello team’s outstanding legacy in the process.
Inflation was the killer, they insisted.
It wasn’t. They were.
Now, as Kevin 747’s aircraft pumps out more carbon dioxide (thank goodness CO2 is good for the planet and essential for plant life and not the poisonous polluter Kevin claims it to be), his new IR legislation and his planned greenhouse bill will choke off Australian jobs.
But, as the advertisements used to say, there is more - however, in this case it’s not a nice set of steak knives. Rudd and his cohort have so depleted the nation’s savings that the federal Government is now planning to axe a central part of Labor’s health policy: the universality ofthe Medicare safety net.
Introduced by the Whitlam Labor government in 1973, the safety net has always enjoyed bipartisan support - until the arrival of the Rudd vandals in Canberra.
Rudd and his horde now wish to break that compact, despite a specific election promise backed by a flood of media statements he and current Health Minister Nicola Roxon both issued. In what will be one of the most disastrous attacks on the Australian families Rudd claims to champion, he will redefine who is rich and who is poor by introducing a form of means test at a time when household wealth is extremely transitory.
Families who save will be caught up in a pincer movement. If they safeguard their earnings to give themselves the security they desire in order to have children, they will find themselves too wealthy to benefit from Medicare.
Yet, when one member of the family stops working to stay home with their new children, their income will drop just at a time when they need to meet extra costs.
The chronically ill will be hit and unable to meet the cost of specialist care; the elderly will find themselves unable to get specialist care when it is needed, because of the lengthening waiting lists, and the younger people wanting to have families will find themselves excluded because both husband and wife work.
Under Rudd’s plan, hard-working couples would be denied the safety net because they’re too wealthy, but be able to access it once they’ve paid up - because they would then be poor.
It doesn’t make sense, any more than it does slugging self-funded retirees and removing them from self-sufficiency.
Particularly hit will be those families seeking to use IVF. This is no small percentage now. On the percentages, one child in every Sydney classroom is now the product of IVF treatment, which is responsible for the birth of 11,000 children a year.
When asked last week about his plans for cancer patients and young couples on IVF treatment, Rudd retreated into the meaningless gibberish he now resorts to whenever he is challenged in Parliamentary Question Time.
The closest the Rudd government has come to acknowledging its devious plan to dump the Medicare safety net came in the Senate when Queensland Labor Senator Joe Ludwig admitted that the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission “will do more work on the safety net’’.
Labor is committed to destroying jobs during the current economic downturn, now it has revealed that the health safety net is no longer sacrosanct.
Parliament is now on holiday until the May Budget session but there are many serious questions that need answering.
Jobs, health, and the lack of a strategic plan in Afghanistan where 10 Australian soldiers have now been killed in the war Kevin Rudd wanted to fight, as opposed to the Iraq conflict, which he wanted to run from and leave our allies in the lurch.
Watch our Prime Minister duck the hard issues during his press conferences over the next six weeks.
It’s not personal, it’s just politics, but the only sound Kevin wants to hear is the ice rattling on the drinks trolley on his own jet.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Australia: Socialised Medicine aka.Medi - dont - Care
Cabinet delay on drug subsidy hits 1600
Herald Sun
March 10, 2009 12:00am
MORE than 350 bowel cancer patients a month are dying as they wait for federal Cabinet to approve subsidising a $55,000 drug.
Eight months ago the Federal Government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee approved a subsidy for the cancer drug Avastin, which costs $55,000 a year.
The decision should have cut the medicine's cost to $32.90 for general patients and $5.30 for pensioners.
But before the subsidy can be paid Cabinet must approve the committee's ruling, because the subsidy for the drug will cost taxpayers more than $10 million a year.
Since the drug subsidy was approved 1600 patients have missed out.
Just 305 patients have been able to pay the $20,000 they need to go on to a special scheme in which the drug's manufacturer Roche helps patients with the cost of the drug.
Retired teacher Jan Plummer, who was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in March, 2007 has taken Avastin for two years.
She is urging Cabinet to act quickly to subsidise the drug.
"I can imagine how many people who are waiting to go on this drug and can't afford it," she said.
She says she could afford it because her health fund, NSW Teacher's Federation, is one of only a few that help pay the cost.
"God help those who don't have health cover or whose funds don't pay," she said.
She says she's been able to travel, swim and run while on the drug that's injected every two weeks.
The only side effect has been high blood pressure that's treated with tablets.
In March last year, it was revealed three costly treatments for Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis and renal disease were delayed.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon spokesman said yesterday he could not comment on when Cabinet might consider the drug.
Roche says price negotiations were settled in August last year.
Bowel cancer is the nation's most common cancer with more than 12,500 cases emerging every year. It is the second biggest cancer killer after lung cancer with 4500 people dying of it each year.
These bowel cancer sufferers DIE not because of a lack of money available to treat them, they die because they are not considered a high enough priority on the list of this Socialist Labor Governments worthy causes. (see link to previous post re PM Rudd's $75 million dollar gift to Islamic terrorists and their supporters)
The Australian Labor Party's love of, and support of, left wing loons,despots and terrorists far out weighs it's love of and concern for Australians.
Mr Rudd has as I write commanded Australia's Govenor General a close personal friend of his and his family, to leave next week for a whirlwind tour of Africa to seek the support of the various African despots, thugs and hoodlums in securing Australia a seat on the United Nations Security Council, Mr Rudd's other great priority.
Mr Rudd's obsession with grand standing on the world stage,rubbing shoulders with any loon and third world despotic African / Islamic thug who tells him what he wants to hear ie what a "great bloke Kevin 07 is", how much will it cost the Australian taxpayers to stroke his pathetic ego? how many more Australian bowel cancer sufferers will die whilst this prick struts around like the jumped up level 3 public servant he is, and will always be, telling anyone who will listen what a genius he is.
Kevin Rudd Gives away $75million to Gazan Islamic terrorists and their supporters
A life on hold, thanks to red tape
Peter Dutton
News.com.au
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Imagine needing a complicated organ transplant to save your life. But the vital surgery that can save you has never been performed in Australia.
It is routinely performed overseas. Your doctors have said you will be lucky to survive another 12 months without the transplant.
You would hope and pray that Australia’s health authorities and Health Minister Nicola Roxon would do all they could to save your life.
Assess your health condition. Assess the treatment options and then make a timely decision on how you get your lifesaving treatment.
That is the circumstance that 36-year-old Sydney woman, Pauline Talty, found herself in last October.
Today – 20 weeks later – almost five months later - Pauline Talty remains in a Sydney hospital desperately waiting for an answer to her application to be sent to the United States for treatment.
She is being let down!
Three eminent doctors, Dr David Storey of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital; Dr Ross Smith, Professor of Surgery, formerly of Royal North Shore Hospital and Dr Michael Crawford, Surgical Director of the Australian National Liver Transplant Unit are all agreed that Pauline should be sent to Pittsburgh for a bowel transplant.
Their opinions were filed with the Federal Health Department months ago, but still Pauline is being asked to justify why funding should be provided for travel to America.
This is the sort of excessive red tape and bureaucracy which has brought public hospitals in New South Wales to their knees.
And it’s coming from a Federal Government which said it was going to “fix” health.
Imagine if you were in Pauline’s circumstances.
What would you feel? What would you say to the bureaucrats who hold your life in their hands?
Herald Sun
March 10, 2009 12:00am
MORE than 350 bowel cancer patients a month are dying as they wait for federal Cabinet to approve subsidising a $55,000 drug.
Eight months ago the Federal Government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee approved a subsidy for the cancer drug Avastin, which costs $55,000 a year.
The decision should have cut the medicine's cost to $32.90 for general patients and $5.30 for pensioners.
But before the subsidy can be paid Cabinet must approve the committee's ruling, because the subsidy for the drug will cost taxpayers more than $10 million a year.
Since the drug subsidy was approved 1600 patients have missed out.
Just 305 patients have been able to pay the $20,000 they need to go on to a special scheme in which the drug's manufacturer Roche helps patients with the cost of the drug.
Retired teacher Jan Plummer, who was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in March, 2007 has taken Avastin for two years.
She is urging Cabinet to act quickly to subsidise the drug.
"I can imagine how many people who are waiting to go on this drug and can't afford it," she said.
She says she could afford it because her health fund, NSW Teacher's Federation, is one of only a few that help pay the cost.
"God help those who don't have health cover or whose funds don't pay," she said.
She says she's been able to travel, swim and run while on the drug that's injected every two weeks.
The only side effect has been high blood pressure that's treated with tablets.
In March last year, it was revealed three costly treatments for Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis and renal disease were delayed.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon spokesman said yesterday he could not comment on when Cabinet might consider the drug.
Roche says price negotiations were settled in August last year.
Bowel cancer is the nation's most common cancer with more than 12,500 cases emerging every year. It is the second biggest cancer killer after lung cancer with 4500 people dying of it each year.
These bowel cancer sufferers DIE not because of a lack of money available to treat them, they die because they are not considered a high enough priority on the list of this Socialist Labor Governments worthy causes. (see link to previous post re PM Rudd's $75 million dollar gift to Islamic terrorists and their supporters)
The Australian Labor Party's love of, and support of, left wing loons,despots and terrorists far out weighs it's love of and concern for Australians.
Mr Rudd has as I write commanded Australia's Govenor General a close personal friend of his and his family, to leave next week for a whirlwind tour of Africa to seek the support of the various African despots, thugs and hoodlums in securing Australia a seat on the United Nations Security Council, Mr Rudd's other great priority.
Mr Rudd's obsession with grand standing on the world stage,rubbing shoulders with any loon and third world despotic African / Islamic thug who tells him what he wants to hear ie what a "great bloke Kevin 07 is", how much will it cost the Australian taxpayers to stroke his pathetic ego? how many more Australian bowel cancer sufferers will die whilst this prick struts around like the jumped up level 3 public servant he is, and will always be, telling anyone who will listen what a genius he is.
Kevin Rudd Gives away $75million to Gazan Islamic terrorists and their supporters
Prior to the introduction of Socialised medicine into Australia by the Australian Labor Party, Australia had the BEST health system in the world bar NONE,all the more reason for the Socialists to destroy it. see Socialised medicine
A life on hold, thanks to red tape
Peter Dutton
News.com.au
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Imagine needing a complicated organ transplant to save your life. But the vital surgery that can save you has never been performed in Australia.
It is routinely performed overseas. Your doctors have said you will be lucky to survive another 12 months without the transplant.
You would hope and pray that Australia’s health authorities and Health Minister Nicola Roxon would do all they could to save your life.
Assess your health condition. Assess the treatment options and then make a timely decision on how you get your lifesaving treatment.
That is the circumstance that 36-year-old Sydney woman, Pauline Talty, found herself in last October.
Today – 20 weeks later – almost five months later - Pauline Talty remains in a Sydney hospital desperately waiting for an answer to her application to be sent to the United States for treatment.
She is being let down!
Three eminent doctors, Dr David Storey of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital; Dr Ross Smith, Professor of Surgery, formerly of Royal North Shore Hospital and Dr Michael Crawford, Surgical Director of the Australian National Liver Transplant Unit are all agreed that Pauline should be sent to Pittsburgh for a bowel transplant.
Their opinions were filed with the Federal Health Department months ago, but still Pauline is being asked to justify why funding should be provided for travel to America.
This is the sort of excessive red tape and bureaucracy which has brought public hospitals in New South Wales to their knees.
And it’s coming from a Federal Government which said it was going to “fix” health.
Imagine if you were in Pauline’s circumstances.
What would you feel? What would you say to the bureaucrats who hold your life in their hands?
"Socialism means equality of income or nothing...........Under Socialism
you would not be allowed to be poor.
You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught and employed
whether you liked it or not.
If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to
be worth all his trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly
manner; but while you were permitted to live,
you would have to live well."
Bernard Shaw.
you would not be allowed to be poor.
You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught and employed
whether you liked it or not.
If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to
be worth all his trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly
manner; but while you were permitted to live,
you would have to live well."
Bernard Shaw.
Follow New Zealand NOT Obama
Follow the Kiwi leader, not Obama
In this crisis, our neighbour is a better economic model than the US or Britain,contends Tony Makin
The Australian
March 11, 2009
DESPITE the federal fiscal stimuli we had to have, Australia is almost certain to experience the recession it was not supposed to have.
So, with earlier stimulatory measures failing to work as expected, what alternatives would work better?
The answer is: those primarily focused on the production rather than the spending side of the economy.
Federal fiscal packages unveiled since October last year have aimed to boost consumption in the short term, in keeping with Treasury advice at the outset that the best fiscal response to the global financial crisis was to "go early, go hard, go households".
However, an arguably sounder fiscal response would have been the exact opposite: go later, go easy, go firms.
This does not mean federal policymakers should have ignored the downturn or that all aspects of fiscal stimulus packages have been unworthy. On the contrary, many infrastructure projects scheduled for future years have been overdue, there is some business tax relief and business regulation problems are being addressed.
But too much faith has been put in using fiscal policy to boost consumption on the demand side of the economy in the short run via tens of billions of dollars' worth of bonus payments. A different mix of measures should have recognised that the financial crisis first struck the aggregate supply side of the economy, not the demand side.
For federal fiscal policy to go later would have meant letting monetary policy go further in the first instance to pre-emptively manage the expected downturn in short-run macro-economic activity. The Reserve Bank of Australia has had much greater scope to do this compared with central banks abroad because official interest rates in Australia had been too high for too long before the global financial crisis hit home.
Inflation also had been wrongly diagnosed as an aggregate demand problem rather than a supply side, or cost-push, problem thanks to high oil and other international commodity prices.
The lowering of official interest rates by four full percentage points since September and the sharp exchange rate depreciation since then will do more to buffer the economy from the worst of the crisis than any fiscal action in train.
It also would have been advisable for federal fiscal policy to go easy in the light of the whack to budget revenue and the budget bottom line as a result of global commodity price falls and diminishing company and capital gains tax receipts.
Moreover, going easy on fiscal policy would have avoided the problem that will soon arise when government borrowing to fund growing state and federal budget deficits puts upward pressure on long-term interest rates, thereby limiting the Reserve Bank's discretion to lower interest rates across the spectrum.
"Go households" has meant channelling scarce federal fiscal outlays to select segments of the economy's household sector. But this has ignored the fact firms were the first victims of the crisis.
For many struggling firms, falling sales were initially less of a problem than the unavailability of credit. Paradoxically, the raft of hasty public spending initiatives implemented across the world may hold back recovery if households and markets become increasingly alarmed about higher future taxation, interest rates and inflation.
Unemployment is the scourge of recessions. However, it is the business sector, not households, that ultimately employs most people, creates most of gross domestic product and invests in the economy's future. Hence, it would have been better to assist firms' bottom line directly on the cost side through rapid regulation relief and tax relief, such as payroll tax reduction, than assist indirectly on the revenue side through trickle-down sales.
Though the federal fiscal response so far offers some business tax relief, this is dwarfed by the bonus payments aimed at boosting consumption.
Rather than following aggregate demand-oriented approaches adopted by the US, Britain and other countries, federal policymakers should look to New Zealand, which so far has avoided measures aimed directly at inflating consumption spending. Instead, the NZ Government has emphasised supply-side measures that will flatten marginal taxes levied on individuals, improve infrastructure and quickly lower the regulatory burden on business.
This is not the first time NZ has led the world in economic policy innovation. It was a Labour government there that initiated comprehensive economic reform under the direction of treasurer Roger Douglas from the mid-1980s.
This change in policy direction occurred following a currency crisis resulting from fiscal excess and included labour market reform, privatisation, public finance reform and trade liberalisation.
The breadth and depth of NZ's reforms had no precedent in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the measures were initiated before the Hawke-Keating government commendably followed suit with a similar reform program that delivered the strong productivity gains Australia enjoyed until the turn of the century.
NZ was also the first country to formally legislate for an independent central bank whose sole objective was to keep inflation low.
Years later Australia adopted a weaker version of the NZ monetary policy model, as did Britain. It's now time to emulate the spirit of NZ's fiscal response to the crisis.
We all know about NZ's rugby prowess and how often it beats Australia at the game. If we were to score Australia v New Zealand on fiscal responses to the global financial crisis so far, it would be Australia0, NZ 1.
That's not counting penalty tries where one side gets points for being obstructed by the other. Such obstruction will be evident as public sector borrowing resulting from aggregate demand management by the state and federal governments in this country pushes up Australasian interest rates at NZ's expense.
Tony Makin is professor of economics at Griffith University's Gold Coast campus.
Too simple, just common sense, Obama & Rudd are, we are told, highly intelligent, so they must be must be sending the United States ( western world) and Australia, to hell in a hand basket deliberately. See Rudd's hand outs below.
Australia's much loved,Dear Leader,Comrade Rudd salutes his adoring followers.
Family bonuses roll out tomorrow
News.com.au
March 10, 2009
CENTRELINK will start rolling out one-off payments to families from tomorrow as part of the Federal Government's $42 billion stimulus package.
Single-income families will receive a $900 bonus if they are recipients of Family Tax Benefit part B.
Families receiving Tax Benefit A will get a $950 back-to-school bonus for each child aged between four and 18.
Recipients of the carer payment or disability support pension, aged less than 19 years old on February 3, 2009, will also receive $950.
Eligible drought-affected farmers will receive $950 hardship payments from March 24, the same time a $950 one-off training and learning bonus and education entry payment is paid to eligible students.
The one-off bonus of up to $900 for taxpayers, earning less than $100,000, will flow from April.
In this crisis, our neighbour is a better economic model than the US or Britain,contends Tony Makin
The Australian
March 11, 2009
DESPITE the federal fiscal stimuli we had to have, Australia is almost certain to experience the recession it was not supposed to have.
So, with earlier stimulatory measures failing to work as expected, what alternatives would work better?
The answer is: those primarily focused on the production rather than the spending side of the economy.
Federal fiscal packages unveiled since October last year have aimed to boost consumption in the short term, in keeping with Treasury advice at the outset that the best fiscal response to the global financial crisis was to "go early, go hard, go households".
However, an arguably sounder fiscal response would have been the exact opposite: go later, go easy, go firms.
This does not mean federal policymakers should have ignored the downturn or that all aspects of fiscal stimulus packages have been unworthy. On the contrary, many infrastructure projects scheduled for future years have been overdue, there is some business tax relief and business regulation problems are being addressed.
But too much faith has been put in using fiscal policy to boost consumption on the demand side of the economy in the short run via tens of billions of dollars' worth of bonus payments. A different mix of measures should have recognised that the financial crisis first struck the aggregate supply side of the economy, not the demand side.
For federal fiscal policy to go later would have meant letting monetary policy go further in the first instance to pre-emptively manage the expected downturn in short-run macro-economic activity. The Reserve Bank of Australia has had much greater scope to do this compared with central banks abroad because official interest rates in Australia had been too high for too long before the global financial crisis hit home.
Inflation also had been wrongly diagnosed as an aggregate demand problem rather than a supply side, or cost-push, problem thanks to high oil and other international commodity prices.
The lowering of official interest rates by four full percentage points since September and the sharp exchange rate depreciation since then will do more to buffer the economy from the worst of the crisis than any fiscal action in train.
It also would have been advisable for federal fiscal policy to go easy in the light of the whack to budget revenue and the budget bottom line as a result of global commodity price falls and diminishing company and capital gains tax receipts.
Moreover, going easy on fiscal policy would have avoided the problem that will soon arise when government borrowing to fund growing state and federal budget deficits puts upward pressure on long-term interest rates, thereby limiting the Reserve Bank's discretion to lower interest rates across the spectrum.
"Go households" has meant channelling scarce federal fiscal outlays to select segments of the economy's household sector. But this has ignored the fact firms were the first victims of the crisis.
For many struggling firms, falling sales were initially less of a problem than the unavailability of credit. Paradoxically, the raft of hasty public spending initiatives implemented across the world may hold back recovery if households and markets become increasingly alarmed about higher future taxation, interest rates and inflation.
Unemployment is the scourge of recessions. However, it is the business sector, not households, that ultimately employs most people, creates most of gross domestic product and invests in the economy's future. Hence, it would have been better to assist firms' bottom line directly on the cost side through rapid regulation relief and tax relief, such as payroll tax reduction, than assist indirectly on the revenue side through trickle-down sales.
Though the federal fiscal response so far offers some business tax relief, this is dwarfed by the bonus payments aimed at boosting consumption.
Rather than following aggregate demand-oriented approaches adopted by the US, Britain and other countries, federal policymakers should look to New Zealand, which so far has avoided measures aimed directly at inflating consumption spending. Instead, the NZ Government has emphasised supply-side measures that will flatten marginal taxes levied on individuals, improve infrastructure and quickly lower the regulatory burden on business.
This is not the first time NZ has led the world in economic policy innovation. It was a Labour government there that initiated comprehensive economic reform under the direction of treasurer Roger Douglas from the mid-1980s.
This change in policy direction occurred following a currency crisis resulting from fiscal excess and included labour market reform, privatisation, public finance reform and trade liberalisation.
The breadth and depth of NZ's reforms had no precedent in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the measures were initiated before the Hawke-Keating government commendably followed suit with a similar reform program that delivered the strong productivity gains Australia enjoyed until the turn of the century.
NZ was also the first country to formally legislate for an independent central bank whose sole objective was to keep inflation low.
Years later Australia adopted a weaker version of the NZ monetary policy model, as did Britain. It's now time to emulate the spirit of NZ's fiscal response to the crisis.
We all know about NZ's rugby prowess and how often it beats Australia at the game. If we were to score Australia v New Zealand on fiscal responses to the global financial crisis so far, it would be Australia0, NZ 1.
That's not counting penalty tries where one side gets points for being obstructed by the other. Such obstruction will be evident as public sector borrowing resulting from aggregate demand management by the state and federal governments in this country pushes up Australasian interest rates at NZ's expense.
Tony Makin is professor of economics at Griffith University's Gold Coast campus.
Too simple, just common sense, Obama & Rudd are, we are told, highly intelligent, so they must be must be sending the United States ( western world) and Australia, to hell in a hand basket deliberately. See Rudd's hand outs below.
Australia's much loved,Dear Leader,Comrade Rudd salutes his adoring followers.Family bonuses roll out tomorrow
News.com.au
March 10, 2009
CENTRELINK will start rolling out one-off payments to families from tomorrow as part of the Federal Government's $42 billion stimulus package.
Single-income families will receive a $900 bonus if they are recipients of Family Tax Benefit part B.
Families receiving Tax Benefit A will get a $950 back-to-school bonus for each child aged between four and 18.
Recipients of the carer payment or disability support pension, aged less than 19 years old on February 3, 2009, will also receive $950.
Eligible drought-affected farmers will receive $950 hardship payments from March 24, the same time a $950 one-off training and learning bonus and education entry payment is paid to eligible students.
The one-off bonus of up to $900 for taxpayers, earning less than $100,000, will flow from April.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Australian PM Kevin Rudd "...and his hypocrisy. Underline hypocrisy."
Comrade Rudd's great con game
SMH
Paul Sheehan
March 9, 2009
It is going to be fascinating to see how long Kevin Rudd, the greatest illusionist ever to become prime minister of Australia, can maintain this illusion of omnipresent leadership created by his energy, his ubiquity and his hypocrisy. Underline hypocrisy.
Rudd is on course to become the next Gough Whitlam, but Whitlam without the wit. Like Whitlam, he may win a second election before the electorate wakes up. At least Comrade Whitlam was stuck with a claque of criminals in his ministry - Al Grassby, Jim Cairns, Rex Connor - whereas Rudd has no such impediment.
So remember the words, uttered last night, by Rudd on Channel Seven: "Any person's job loss through no fault of their own is a lost job too many when it comes to me. I'm the Prime Minister of the country, the buck stops with me."
Was Rudd able to save a single one of the 2000 manufacturing jobs lost at Pacific Brands last week? No, the buck stopped with the workers. This is the man who increased the immigration program to the largest annual intake in Australia's history, and it is now swelling the ranks of job seekers. This is the man whose Government will, tomorrow, introduce workplace legislation which will increase the power of unions, and give pause to job creators. This is the man who has offered no structural relief to the great job-creating engine of the economy - small business. And this is the man who panicked at the first sign of danger and sprayed the entire $20 billion budget surplus he inherited up against a wall.
If Rudd wants to be Everywhere Man, then let him play the role and bear the consequences. Like most other Western leaders responding to the global financial freeze, he is making it up as he goes along, because we are in uncharted territory. Global industrial output has fallen faster in the past six months than it did at the advent of the Great Depression in 1929-30.
The response of policymakers has been to pump a massive increase in liquidity and government debt obligations into the system. But as the eminent economic historian Professor Niall Ferguson, of Harvard and Oxford, recently warned on his website: "The general assumption seemed to be that practically any kind of government expenditure would be beneficial, provided it was financed by a really big deficit."
Sound familiar? Ferguson continued: "There is something desperate about the way people are clinging to their dog-eared copies of John Maynard Keynes's General Theory. Uneasily aware that their discipline almost entirely failed to anticipate the current crisis, economists seemed to be regressing to macroeconomic childhood, clutching the multiplier like an old teddy bear.
"The harsh reality that is being repressed is this: the Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Worst of all are the banks. Some of the best-known names in American and European finance have balance sheets 40, 60 or even 100 times the size of their capital …
"The delusion is that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt. Yet that is precisely what most governments currently propose to do." Space precludes listing Ferguson's prescriptions but they can be found on his website, and summed up with this sentence: "The solution to the debt crisis is not more debt but less debt."
Tell that to Kevin Keynes. In opposition, Rudd opposed the GST, which in retrospect has been a tremendous stabilising influence in the economy, thanks to John Howard. During the last election, Rudd campaigned as an "economic conservative". Upon winning office, and inheriting a $90 billion financial buffer from outgoing treasurer Peter Costello, he accused the previous government of creating a dangerous inflation threat. It was a fabrication.
After the global financial storm broke, Rudd attacked the excesses of neo-liberal market capitalism even as he spent the entire $20 billion budget surplus he had inherited from the neo-liberals in an absurd attempt to claim he had kept Australia out of recession. The evolution of his economic position has been an opportunistic fraud, exposed by those on his own side of politics.
As the former Labor leader Mark Latham wrote on February 20, in The Australian Financial Review: "When Kevin Rudd lobbied me in October 2004 to become Labor's shadow treasurer, his sales pitch was straight from the neo-liberal playbook. He was enthusiastic about pro-market policies such as deregulation and reducing the size of the state. [As leader] he went to the polls as Howard-lite."
Michael Costa, former Labor treasurer of NSW, dismissed Rudd's recent attack on the excesses of market capitalism, in a critique in The Australian on February 6 as "rambling and selective" and warned that Rudd's response to the global crisis "is likely to do more damage to the economy".
As Niall Ferguson has also warned. When the recession in Australia gets worse, and Rudd's Keynesian cliches have increased the long-term cost of the government intervention, Labor will run a diversionary personal campaign against the Leader of the Opposition, simply because Malcolm Turnbull is a wealthy former merchant banker.
What, you may ask, about the multi-millions the Rudd family has made from neo-liberal policies of the Howard years? Latham had something to say about this, too: "Rudd's wife created an impressive business network and fortune from the Howard government's privatisation of labour market programs."
Rudd can trim his economic sails to pick up whatever political wind he can find because he embodies the hollowness of the pursuit of power before principle.
The Leader of Australia's largest Socialist political party,the Australian Labor Party, ALP, financed by the Marxist based Australian Council of Trade Unions, ACTU,has done very nicely indeed from the policies of the previous conservative Liberal Government of John Howard, he and his wife, Therese Rein (Madame Rudd?) are very wealthy and good luck to them, it was only mid 2008 that the former public servant and his partner were searching for a holiday home and were looking at holiday homes in the vicinity of 10 million dollars, Conservative Capitalist Australia has allowed them to drop the chant of "four legs good two legs bad" and replace it with "four legs good two legs better"
Who can forget Kevin 07's answer to a question during the 2007 election campaign,I believe he asked himself, "I have never been a socialist" clearly he and his wife reject totally the platform of the political party he is now the leader of.
I have never seen an Australian Labor Party leader or politician or their bankers in the ACTU, LIVE the ideology they demand be imposed upon those they despise so much,the Australian people, Mr Rudd and Madame Rudd are doing nothing any different than every other Socialist here and through out the world are doing have done and will continue to do, it's "do as I say not as I do"
SMH
Paul Sheehan
March 9, 2009
It is going to be fascinating to see how long Kevin Rudd, the greatest illusionist ever to become prime minister of Australia, can maintain this illusion of omnipresent leadership created by his energy, his ubiquity and his hypocrisy. Underline hypocrisy.
Rudd is on course to become the next Gough Whitlam, but Whitlam without the wit. Like Whitlam, he may win a second election before the electorate wakes up. At least Comrade Whitlam was stuck with a claque of criminals in his ministry - Al Grassby, Jim Cairns, Rex Connor - whereas Rudd has no such impediment.
So remember the words, uttered last night, by Rudd on Channel Seven: "Any person's job loss through no fault of their own is a lost job too many when it comes to me. I'm the Prime Minister of the country, the buck stops with me."
Was Rudd able to save a single one of the 2000 manufacturing jobs lost at Pacific Brands last week? No, the buck stopped with the workers. This is the man who increased the immigration program to the largest annual intake in Australia's history, and it is now swelling the ranks of job seekers. This is the man whose Government will, tomorrow, introduce workplace legislation which will increase the power of unions, and give pause to job creators. This is the man who has offered no structural relief to the great job-creating engine of the economy - small business. And this is the man who panicked at the first sign of danger and sprayed the entire $20 billion budget surplus he inherited up against a wall.
If Rudd wants to be Everywhere Man, then let him play the role and bear the consequences. Like most other Western leaders responding to the global financial freeze, he is making it up as he goes along, because we are in uncharted territory. Global industrial output has fallen faster in the past six months than it did at the advent of the Great Depression in 1929-30.The response of policymakers has been to pump a massive increase in liquidity and government debt obligations into the system. But as the eminent economic historian Professor Niall Ferguson, of Harvard and Oxford, recently warned on his website: "The general assumption seemed to be that practically any kind of government expenditure would be beneficial, provided it was financed by a really big deficit."
Sound familiar? Ferguson continued: "There is something desperate about the way people are clinging to their dog-eared copies of John Maynard Keynes's General Theory. Uneasily aware that their discipline almost entirely failed to anticipate the current crisis, economists seemed to be regressing to macroeconomic childhood, clutching the multiplier like an old teddy bear.
"The harsh reality that is being repressed is this: the Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Worst of all are the banks. Some of the best-known names in American and European finance have balance sheets 40, 60 or even 100 times the size of their capital …
"The delusion is that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt. Yet that is precisely what most governments currently propose to do." Space precludes listing Ferguson's prescriptions but they can be found on his website, and summed up with this sentence: "The solution to the debt crisis is not more debt but less debt."
Tell that to Kevin Keynes. In opposition, Rudd opposed the GST, which in retrospect has been a tremendous stabilising influence in the economy, thanks to John Howard. During the last election, Rudd campaigned as an "economic conservative". Upon winning office, and inheriting a $90 billion financial buffer from outgoing treasurer Peter Costello, he accused the previous government of creating a dangerous inflation threat. It was a fabrication.
After the global financial storm broke, Rudd attacked the excesses of neo-liberal market capitalism even as he spent the entire $20 billion budget surplus he had inherited from the neo-liberals in an absurd attempt to claim he had kept Australia out of recession. The evolution of his economic position has been an opportunistic fraud, exposed by those on his own side of politics.
As the former Labor leader Mark Latham wrote on February 20, in The Australian Financial Review: "When Kevin Rudd lobbied me in October 2004 to become Labor's shadow treasurer, his sales pitch was straight from the neo-liberal playbook. He was enthusiastic about pro-market policies such as deregulation and reducing the size of the state. [As leader] he went to the polls as Howard-lite."
Michael Costa, former Labor treasurer of NSW, dismissed Rudd's recent attack on the excesses of market capitalism, in a critique in The Australian on February 6 as "rambling and selective" and warned that Rudd's response to the global crisis "is likely to do more damage to the economy".
As Niall Ferguson has also warned. When the recession in Australia gets worse, and Rudd's Keynesian cliches have increased the long-term cost of the government intervention, Labor will run a diversionary personal campaign against the Leader of the Opposition, simply because Malcolm Turnbull is a wealthy former merchant banker.
What, you may ask, about the multi-millions the Rudd family has made from neo-liberal policies of the Howard years? Latham had something to say about this, too: "Rudd's wife created an impressive business network and fortune from the Howard government's privatisation of labour market programs."
Rudd can trim his economic sails to pick up whatever political wind he can find because he embodies the hollowness of the pursuit of power before principle.
Alan Jones interviews Paul Sheehan 10 3 09 Americans take note
The Leader of Australia's largest Socialist political party,the Australian Labor Party, ALP, financed by the Marxist based Australian Council of Trade Unions, ACTU,has done very nicely indeed from the policies of the previous conservative Liberal Government of John Howard, he and his wife, Therese Rein (Madame Rudd?) are very wealthy and good luck to them, it was only mid 2008 that the former public servant and his partner were searching for a holiday home and were looking at holiday homes in the vicinity of 10 million dollars, Conservative Capitalist Australia has allowed them to drop the chant of "four legs good two legs bad" and replace it with "four legs good two legs better"
Who can forget Kevin 07's answer to a question during the 2007 election campaign,I believe he asked himself, "I have never been a socialist" clearly he and his wife reject totally the platform of the political party he is now the leader of.
I have never seen an Australian Labor Party leader or politician or their bankers in the ACTU, LIVE the ideology they demand be imposed upon those they despise so much,the Australian people, Mr Rudd and Madame Rudd are doing nothing any different than every other Socialist here and through out the world are doing have done and will continue to do, it's "do as I say not as I do"
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