Government of clowns.

The carbon tax comedy

 continues

Rulings like the one banning companies from advertising that the new carbon tax has increased their cost  don’t serve the country. It merely advertises how scared our 'rulers' are about public perceptions and reactions. This government always puts its own interests above those of the people it is supposed to be serving...kind of like our own politburo.

Living in the Matrix

Kevin Rudd said this:

"The international challenge for social democrats is to save capitalism from itself.”

Des Moore comments:

Such naive comments reflect a thesis that capitalism and free markets are the problem and that governments are the rescuers. Putting it another way, governments are not to blame but bankers and greedy chief executives have exploited the system for their own benefit. This idea is reflected in the Occupy Wall St group of protesters that has spread to other countries. These 99 percenters want to cut the incomes of the top 1 percent. If we tried that, the 99 per centers would certainly get a small addition to their incomes first up but that would dwindle over time as the top 1 per centers would stop trying to earn above their cut off point.

What we are witnessing throughout the western democracies are 'leaders' who have, due to the benefits conferred by a successful and productive philosophy and their unthinking abuse of this worldview; grown soft in mind as well as in body. People who have lived the 'easy life' for so long that they have embraced thinking patterns at odds with their actual existence and who remain blissfully unaware of the disjunction.

People like Al Gore, who preaches (at a cost of millions to the listeners) about rising ocean waters due to global warming, then goes and buys a mansion right on the seashore. As did the overpaid/over-hyped Tim Flannery.
People like movie stars who berate ordinary people for living unsustainable lives and then hop on their private jets to holiday lavishly in the Bahamas. The list is too long to enumerate.
People like Kevin Rudd, who states that 'capitalism' is the cause of society's failures and bigger/stronger/more powerful governments are the answer. And yet as the Rudd/Gillard governments have overwhelmingly illustrated; government operated schemes fail miserably almost without exception. And as Rudd himself illustrates in his earlier career as a Queensland government lacky; he failed at everything he was tasked to do. In fact Mark Latham was quite scurrilous about Rudd's lack of ability in his (Latham's) expose on the Labor government (for what thats worth), yet Rudd still manages to be promoted to the top spot. How often have we all seen that happen in bureucratic institutions. Failure is alsmost a right of passage into promotion.

The real problem is how many others like him are running parliment?
How many others like him are in the opposition? 
How effective has Gramsci's 'long march' been?
How perspicacious were Francis Schaeffer's predictions in his "How then should we live' series? 

Global destruction

James Delingpole artfully exposes the absurdity of Naomi Klein's rhetoric in this article:
 http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100117165/only-a-totalitarian-new-world-order-can-save-us-now-says-naomi-klein/
However, the truly sad aspect of this story and others like it, is that there appears to be many disaffected people in the western democracies who actually believe that the ills of our world can be cured by a totalitarian government.

In Australia we bear daily witness to unions who scream at, rant over and abuse greedy 'capitalists' who dare to make a profit in their businesses. The same union bosses who incidentally are rather cavalier with  union funds, i.e. they spend it on necessities such as prostitutes, personal shopping trips overseas, and expensive lunches; nevertheless these same profligate union leaders hold the employers to ransom, extorting promises of 'job security', and exorbitant bonuses. How can there be job security when pressures like these are exerted on companies...maintaining jobs at all becomes a struggle in the face of more government taxation, energy taxes, mineral taxes, ever rising wages, global competitors etc.

The radicals in this country will only be satisfied when they have reduced the country to North Korean standards at which time they will turn on the capitalist bosses and blame them for having ruined the country. A win-win situation for radicals of all stripes.

What infuriates me is that there are so many fools of this stripe in Australia, so many who give active support to the oft repeated failures of Marxist/Utopian thinking. People who applaud lunatics like Naomi Klein calling for the jackboot approach. Imagine, more bureaucrats telling us what to do, how to do it and when we are allowed to do anything and then making us pay for the privilege.

Unfortunately the unexamined mind usually requires a cataclysmic event to wake it up to the real world, or as Bruce Cockburn so eloquently observed; "some only see the light through bullet holes".

Just yesterday I and my youngest son had reached Mark 13 in our daily reading and I shuddered at the dark power of this chapter. How soon are we to realising this frightening vision? And for those who laugh at such sandwich-board prophecy consider how easily you may have been convinced by Al Gores ridiculous claims of 'catastrophic global warming', or the Gaia hypothesis, or Rachel Carsons DDT scare, or the Y2 bug, or Paul Erlichs population explosion or any of the many other 'catastrophes'.

The real issue is not so much of which potential catastrophe is about to befall us, but which one do you believe?

Coming to the 'right' conclusion.

Dallas Willard in an introduction to Phillip Johnson's book Wedge of Truth has some challenging things to say about Western thinking during our current Post Modern period:

Reason is the human ability to determine what is real or not real by thinking. Just as, centuries ago, the honest thinker had to be willing to follow the inquiry even if it led to a godless universe, so today the honest thinker has to be willing to follow the inquiry even if it leads to a God-governed universe. This latter possibility today causes those who think they are in charge of what is only reasonable and right to become impatient and imperious. They cannot afford to be wrong about the godlessness of reality, for now our whole system of education is based on that assumption, just as some while ago it was based on the assumption of God.

And so, as Phillip Johnson so beautifully explains and illustrates, reason is replaced by rationalization. Rationalization is the use of reasoning to make sure that one comes out at the right place. Not long ago the dominant ideal within intellectual circles was to judge the conclusion by the method through which it was derived. If the method was good, you were required to accept the conclusion, at least provisionally. Now sadly, the method is judged by whether it brings you out at the 'right' conclusion, as determined by institutional consensus congealed around glittering personalities. If you don't come to the 'right' conclusion, your method is wrong, and you are probably a bad person. Derisive terminology will be used to describe you.

.....The character of rationalization is hidden beneath the cloak of benign authority. In our case today that authority is science. Science we told says this or that. We has better believe it. Unfortunately science say nothing. It is not the kind of thing that can say anything. Only scientists say things, and scientists can be remarkably unscientific and are often remarkably wrong - as subsequent events frequently show. In addition many who would speak for science are not scientists or have no qualifications in the area of their claims. 

This description of the 'debate' sound oddly familiar in Australia at this point in time doesn't it?

Down the gurgler!

.Read this and you will no longer think our debt is insignificant.

Column written by Barnaby in the Canberra Times last week

Forever in debt and Labor still ignoring cost cuts
The Labor party did something remarkable last week, they actually paid back some money after borrowing $11 billion over the six weeks before. Our gross debt is now at $215 billion. Unfortunately they will probably borrow more again this week.

Recent statements by Penny Wong about cost-cutting and by the Secretary of The Treasury, Dr Martin Parkinson, seem to accord with my fears of two years ago that we were taking on too much debt.

On 21 October 2009, Australia's gross debt accelerated through $100 billion. This was before my unfortunately spectacular and brief tenure as Australia's Shadow Finance Minister. I was deeply concerned about the trajectory of our debt but it was very hard to find somebody else in the government or the fourth estate that held similar concerns.‪

I remember the date well as I put out a media release at the time which concluded "There are lots of ways you can try to pay debt but closing your eyes tightly and crossing your fingers has proven lately to be completely ineffective."‪

Leading the caravan of opprobrium against me was Treasury, acting as an arm of government. Repeatedly they said Australia had no problems. They avoided that it was not the size that was the concern, it was the rate of growth, a very small active melanoma. We fell into trap of saying we are in a better position than others because our melanoma is tiny compared to theirs.

In a speech last week Dr Martin Parkinson said "efforts to reduce government net debt should be the immediate focus." Mr Parkinson I'll give you the tip, it would have been easier to control back in 2009.‪ It has taken a couple of years, but now Marty and I appear to be on the same page.‪

You can see Australia's gross debt grow almost every week, like a chia pet, by visiting the front page of the Australian Office of Financial Management website. ‪I imagine it is there because the people we borrow from want a fully transparent view of exactly how much we have borrowed. If you start hiding it they get very, very suspicious.‪

Everything is moving into unfortunate focus as we approach at a rapid rate our third debt ceiling under this government's watch, and Europe and America come to the realisation that the problem is debt.

To understand debt ceilings you must understand gross debt.‪ On 10 March 2009 Mr Wayne Maxwell Swan increased our debt limit from $75 billion to a "temporary" level of $200 billion. According to Wayne we needed this increase because China and India were going to "slow markedly" and the mining boom was "unwinding".

‪The mining boom didn't, but we not only hit our new debt ceiling but it is now at $215 billion, or over $17,000 for every Australian taxpayer. Our next ceiling is at a quarter of a trillion dollars.‪

This debt does not include state government debt (heading towards $250 billion), the debt of fully owned government entities, such as the NBN, or the debt of local governments.‪

To make a budget based on blue, sunny days is not only fraught with danger, it is naïve. It is the old adage of keeping money aside for a rainy day.‪

School halls and ceiling insulation are not the only reasons we now have so much debt, it is generally just poor day-to-day cost management.‪ Labor talk of budget cuts now but why did they ignore people like Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission, and Dr Warwick McKibbin, who both said they should have been cutting spending two years ago?

Those with the purse strings either don't have the strength, or don't have the competency, to remain within our means.‪ Labor’s cabinet is lacking the real business experience where what you bill or sell is what you earn and the cheques you write over the long term better be less than that.

What happened to the $11 billion that Labor borrowed in six weeks? Are there new aircraft carriers in Sydney Harbour with the Australian ensign fluttering off the back? Is there a big new freeway somewhere that I am not aware of? Are there big new dams in Northern Australia delivering water to vast new agricultural areas to feed the world? ‪

If you were to go searching for this money, the place I would humbly suggest you start looking is Canberra. Not the people of Gungahlin, but generally to the Ministers who are in charge of departments that are just not controlling costs.

Barnaby

Tales of Twisted morality.

I'm with Matt Hayden on this one:

Frankly, I think this whole tortured artist myth has a lot to answer for. A helluva lot of cultural and artistic taste-makers and trendsetters really seem to get off on it. They'll sing the praises of an artist who is screwed up but mediocre over one who is brilliant but emotionally stable every time. If you're a performer of some kind it's a pretty good career move to have a raging drug habit and a history of failed, dysfunctional relationships. Then all your work will be seen through this "tortured artist" prism. So even if it's just some crap you cranked out in a few weeks to fulfill contractual obligations to your record label it will still be seen as some kind of brave artistic experiment that ultimately failed.

In South Africa, at the highest point in an otherwise relatively non-dramatic artistic career I was interviewed by a 'progressive', 'cutting-edge', art/design magazine for a profile. When they discovered that I was quite an ordinary family man with no (or hidden) destructive habits they declared that I was not 'interesting enough' for the magazines readership.

I know that I could have curled the interviewers toes with some less than laudable exploits during my youth (and not-so-youth!), however I chose to keep my non-salubrious actions to myself, simply because I was not proud of them. Perhaps I am a dinosaur, perhaps we should let it all hang out for every readers voyeuristic delights, perhaps the myth is worth cultivating in order to gain some more sales, goodness knows I could always use that. But I wonder about the wisdom of making a virtue out of human frailty. Amy Winehouse gives pause to the embracing of such indiscretion.

I know fellow artists who choose to live on the edge of society solely because they art in the arts. Inhabit that dimension for an extended period of time and you begin to lose sight of reality, of whats true, noble, worthy, i.e. of the truly creative. Is it any wonder therefore that so much artwork today celebrates ugly, destructive and rotten. Perfectly respectable youngsters would arrive at the university to study art and within months they would be transformed into anti-social misfits whose raison detre appeared to be destruction as opposed to creativity.

Many, too many young lives have been negatively impacted and possibly wasted as a result of this false worldview. Perhaps the era of the anonymous painter/designer/sculptor should be the one thing to be hauled out of the closet again.

UPDATE:  22.11.2011
Even though we live in an image saturated and artistically prolific culture, interest in the 'fine arts' is lukewarm at best, and generally restricted to the few...most of whom don't even have a clue whats going on but enjoy the 'frisson' of being part of the 'elite', thereby reinforcing the Emperors' clothes myth.
The Australian reports on how even Aunty ABC has abandoned the arts:

Yet the attitude persists that arts journalism is somehow indulgent, unimportant and dispensable, attracting too few readers or viewers to warrant the media space.

ABC1 is dropping Art Nation, its only general-interest arts magazine, because it costs $2 million a year to produce and attracts only 60,000 viewers.

The broadcaster also has scrapped two of its specialist cultural programs on Radio National, The Book Show and Artworks, and rolled books and arts into a single daily program.

Reality has a way of slapping down the Utopianist and all of the the hand-wringing, pathos laden, anti-everything, immoral, insane vibe of post modern art has eventually tired even the most hardened of viewers, leaving only those directly involved in the game...the last, thin foundation. Unfortunately such a scenario falls well within the definition of a cultural collapse which, as history indicates, often signals the end of the beginning of general civilizational implosion.

No doubt the 'arty' elites will scream 'phillistines' at the uncaring mob and in the sheltered niche cafes and green enclaves they will excoriate all whose tastes do not match their own jaded, often twisted perspectives on 'artistic sensibilities'.

And the world will continue to turn.

The sound of bells?

Donne wrote: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

Independant schools beware, Gillard claims Joan Kirner as a powerful influence on her (Gillards) philosophy and this is what her guru has to say about schooling:

Kirner once declared that education had to be re-shaped to be “part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system”.

Talk about channelling Gramsci.
And........................:

A further illustration that the Gonski funding review represents a danger to non-government schools and that the ALP federal government harbours a dislike for such schools is the failure of the last three education ministers to guarantee that non-government schools will not suffer financially as a result of the review.

Julia Gillard, Simon Crean and now Peter Garrett, while stating that no school will lose funding, have all refused to promise that any new model will index funding on an annual basis. When he was interviewed soon after the launch of the four research papers in late August, Garrett, on being asked three times, refused to clarify the matter.

That non-government schools are in danger of losing funding in real terms and having their autonomy compromised is made more likely given that the Greens are able to exert so much pressure. Julia Gillard depends on the Greens for her government’s political survival and the extreme-Left party is no friend of Catholic and independent schools.

Not only does the Greens’ education policy call for funding to non-government schools to be frozen at 2003-04 levels, that funding to wealthy schools be withdrawn and that funding be reduced to take account of money raised by schools and their communities, the Greens also seek to force their radical social agenda on schools. If the Greens have their way, the right of faith-based schools to employ and enrol those sympathetic and supportive of such schools’ religious beliefs will no longer be permitted. 

Dr Kevin Donnelly is Director of the Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute and the author of Australia’s Education Revolution (Connor Court).