From a Melbourne rail professional who some say, has too much time on his hands, selected news and commentary to help preserve our enduring institutions and values, advance economic liberalism, social conservatism and other, sundry matters ... Online since 1999 ...
Like respect, credibility is earned not given, it doesn't just come with the territory nor title, even if that title is, Prime Minister.
In all cases. it must be earned and maintained.
In August 2011, Gillard says its incredible to think she won’t give us the surplus saying,
"...the Budget’s coming back to surplus ... There’s no credible analysis on our economic plan that it won’t come back to surplus".
July 2011, she adds,
"The budget will be back in surplus in 2013 as promised".
In May 2012, within the budget papers we read:
The Government is returning the budget to surplus in 2012–13, on time and as promised, with surpluses growing over the forward estimates.
In November 2012 we were still assured it would be a surplus, but just a few short weeks later in December it was suddenly going to be a $1.1 billion deficit.
Then by late April 2013, the PM told us it would now blow out to a $12.5 billion deficit.
And following on, just three weeks later, as Treasurer Swan spells out budget 2013 and we find it's a deficit of over $19 billion!
Otherwise said, around $7,000,000,000 went astray in 3 weeks.
Julia Gillard has done little to earn anything but a loathing for her incapacity, the folly of her ways.
A prominent and highly successful financial guru wrote this short piece about budgetary plight.
You probably heard Julia Gillard’s speech yesterday saying how bad our financial situation had become, which is in stark contrast to Wayne Swan going about saying we’re doing better than everybody else. As I’ve said many times at seminars, it’s a bit like a one armed man saying I’m better off than a man with no arms at all.
The harsh reality is that this government has got us into debt of nearly $300 billion and the servicing cost of this is over $15 billion a year.
The incoming government has an horrendous task, they first have to bring the budget back to surplus and then make that surplus big enough to pay back $300 billion. It would take 50 years at $20 billion a year. Looks like our great grandchildren will be paying it.
There was one point that has not been highlighted. The government’s revenue has NOT fallen - it is simply less than they expected. The problem is that expenditure has not been cut to match the fact that receipts were less than budgeted for, even though they are more than last year’s.
..." the cost of servicing the existing debt is nearly $14 billion annually or otherwise, the equivalent of $38 million dollars a day in interest charges..."
The level of Government debt stands at just over $274.6 billion and while it is very high, the figure does not surprise me given that last August I noted that it was just shy of $245 billion. While defenders of present debt levels will argue that it is small in terms of GDP ratios, this line of argument provides little comfort given yesterday’s deficit news.
I have several concerns; in the first case, its rate of growth is alarmingly high, having risen a confounding 75% in the past two and a half years. I am also becoming uneasy about the cost associated with servicing this debt.
Federal borrowings come at a price in the form of interest by taking an ever-increasing slice of revenues. Even when we account for our record low rates, the cost of servicing the existing debt is nearly $14 billion annually or otherwise, the equivalent of $38 million dollars a day in interest charges.
If the Government had been more prudent (smart) and, for example, limited debt growth to half present levels, then the interest saved in just 3 years would amount to around $21 billion.
NDIS and Gonski Reforms
Now some perspective, this saving would pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) $6.8 billion and the Gonski reforms $6.5 billion and still leave around $7.5 billion in change. Moreover, the two reforms paid without any levy or money from States and Territories. I am not advocating for either of the two reforms however, the citation drives home my point.
More disturbing still, the cost of servicing the debt is on track to rise to as high as $20 billion by 2016 in line with further projected increases in debt. All the while, I am assuming -perhaps incorrectly- that existing interest rate levels will remain low indefinitely.
To think, we had zero debt as recently as 2007.
Howard, last 5 yrs of office: Revenue $1.06T, Expenditure $0.98 T Gillard/Rudd last 5 yrs: Rev $1.54 T Expenditure $1.73 T #Auspol
— Ottavio Marasco (@OttavioMarasco) April 29, 2013
I'm trying to wrap my head around the likely size of the public payroll post #NDIS#auspol
— Ottavio Marasco (@OttavioMarasco) May 2, 2013
Margaret Thatcher's granddaughter Amanda Thatcher reads Ephesians 6.10-18 inside St Paul's.
Have we heard the last of Amanda Thatcher? Given she said, 'It's sort of in the blood' one like me would hope not. Just perhaps the bloodline would pilot her into a career in politics like her grandmother, Baroness Thatcher.
A must see video produced to celebrate the Institute of Public Affairs' 70th anniversary, sees Dr David Kemp explaining why the organisation, founded in 1943, is needed today more than ever before.
" ... our principles endure ... "
They gave it their all in what was a hard fought campaign. In the end, there could only be one winner, in this case the incumbent, congratulations President Barack Obama.
Mitt Romney's somber yet class speech surprised many.
After more than one million television ads, countless appearances and three contentious debates, the 2012 presidential election remained on a knife's edge with both candidates seeking to shore up support in states crucial to their chances Tuesday.
President Barack Obama cheered on backers in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa on Monday, evidence that his campaign aimed to build a firewall in the Midwest to try to block his Republican rival. He plans to await the election returns at his base in Chicago.
Mitt Romney swooped through four battleground states—Virginia, Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire—where the Republican needs to do well to secure a win. His campaign organized two additional stops on Election Day, at campaign offices in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Mr. Romney is hedging his bets with a last-minute push in Pennsylvania before he returns to Boston to monitor the returns.
National polls are essentially tied while polls in some battleground states showed Mr. Obama with narrow leads. Both campaigns said their internal data show their candidate would win.
Voters are set to determine whether $6 billion in advertising and other campaign spending would bring a new era to Washington—with a Republican White House and administration—or extend the status quo of a Democratic White House and split Congress.
The result will answer some questions that have lingered since Mr. Obama's historic 2008 victory. The president was sent to the White House by a coalition comprising segments of the electorate—African-Americans, Hispanics and young voters—as well as women. The president's aides spent much of the past four years working to keep that group together, one that if it remains viable could be a lasting strength for Democrats.
With the margin of victory for the winner expected to be narrow, a likely outcome is a political system as split as the country. It isn't clear either party would be positioned to emerge Wednesday with a clear mandate for tackling some the nation's biggest problems—including the looming tax increases and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff.
The tightness of the race sparked speculation about the possibility of unusual outcomes, such as an Electoral College tie or the winner failing to capture a majority of the popular vote. Continue reading
Part of the reason is because, just like the party and Government she leads, she perpetually redefines herself according to focus group research and short term agendas. Who are you Julia Gillard?
In this dream, the Prime Minister, who in the past secretly aided her former-boyfriend to set up what she admitted was a “slush fund” and to then buy property with stolen union funds, defended the disgraced Speaker, and her defence was simply to say that everyone opposed to her was a misogynist: a government that with a straight face defended misogyny by accusing misogyny.
"- The twice-married Peter Slipper repeatedly sexts a young and good-looking gay man who works for him ... Peter Slipper expresses in these sexts a marked dislike for lady bits ... Peter Slipper tells the court that he loves his wife (despite her having the same unpleasant lady bits) ... Peter Slipper is therefore Husband of the Year and an innocent victim of Liberal Party machinations ..." "Tony Abbott shows no signs of being fazed by strong women, having been married to one for years ... Tony Abbott turns his back on Nicola Roxon in parliament ... Tony Abbott calls for the resignation of lady-bits-insulter and office masher Peter Slipper as Speaker of the House of Representatives ... Tony Abbott is a misogynist sexist pig."
In my dream, the government complained of the "Americanisation" of Australian politics, while itself basing it's attack template on US Marxist activist Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" (eg: Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
So bizzare is this world that everyone in the media simply lapped this cognative madness up and reported the government line verbatim praising the Prime Minister's speech.
To say this dream described a total farce is an understatement. It is a comedy which puts Yes Minister to shame. It is absolutely totally unbelievable that such a thing could ever occur in reality.
Our political and media class would NEVER stoop so low.
Except, … as you are well aware, this was not a dream. This insanity is exactly what is occurring.
How can anyone possibly justify this excuse of a government? Anyone observing from the outside can only conclude that it is a total, absolute, and utter joke. Yet so insulated is our media, so removed from reality is our Canberra Press Gallery, that they blindly regurgitate the government line.
Julia Gillard’s rambling defence of the indefensible yesterday – her gall in baselessly attacking her opponents while she supported the utter disgrace of Peter Slipper (who since resigned as speaker), her shameless audacity is mind-boggling. And yet our fawning media faithfully reprinted the government line. And praised her speech.
I would laugh at these antics, if it were not for the fact that they have real consequences, in the real world.
As this farce continues, our budget deficit skyrockets, waste and overspending is occurring left right and centre, the “Infrastructure Government” hasn’t built a single thing, the carbon tax is hitting every Australian family, our defence force becomes dilapidated and our borders unsecure.
Families are hurting, and all the government can do is obsess about name-calling Tony Abbott.
In a little over a month, NASA will make its final delivery of a space shuttle for museum purposes. To be precise, on Nov. 2, Atlantis will be transported from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to the nearby visitor center. We can look forward to the opening of the Atlantis exhibit in 2013, in a display that will highlight the shuttles history.
Now let’s enjoy this great retro footage to the music of Ulrich Schnauss and through it, celebrate American ingenuity. WATCH IT ALL IT'S MUST SEE WHICH CULMINATES IN AN EMOTIONALLY CHARGED LAUNCH.
A useful article detailing exactly how much time it would take for Iran to go from being not merely nuclear but weapons capable ...
ISIS has learned in researching and discussing the new National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) on Iran that important differences exist from the 2007 NIE on
Iran’s capability to make a nuclear weapon. The 2007 declassified NIE
specifically noted that it did not take into account Iran’s “declared civil work
related to uranium conversion and enrichment” when assessing the status of its
nuclear weapons program. The new NIE does not distinguish between declared and
undeclared enrichment activities when considering Iran’s nuclear weapons
capability. In doing so, the new NIE more accurately values the impact that
Iran’s advancements in its gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program, declared
or otherwise, have on its capability to decide to make highly enriched uranium
for a nuclear weapon. This acknowledges that Iran’s capability to make highly
enriched uranium, as represented by the declared elements of its uranium
enrichment program, influences any political decision to make nuclear
weapons.
The new NIE includes that Iran could be furthering its development of
components for nuclear weapons while reportedly assessing that not enough
activity has occurred on weaponization to justify a determination that Iran has
made a decision to restart its nuclear weaponization program or build a bomb.
1 Both NIEs judge that Iran had a nuclear
weaponization program prior to 2004. Missing in ISIS’s information about the
new NIE is the confidence level that the intelligence community has in its
ability to detect a restart and the level of detected activity necessary to
determine that a restart has occurred. The 2007 NIE judged with moderate
confidence that restart had not happened as of mid-2007. It should be noted
that this assessment about restart was rejected by key European allies and
Israel, which all assessed that Iran was likely continuing to develop its
nuclear weaponization capabilities and that its nuclear weapons program likely
existed after 2003.
I received a leaflet in the mail recently, nothing extraordinary just another flyer featuring an aspiring candidate seeking support for local council elections. One of the paragraphs within reads:
“As a long-standing member of the ALP, I appreciate the important role Council plays in delivering quality services to the community”.
There is something about this innocuous sentence; it implies that only ALP members can appreciate services that local council provide. I guess that ALP both as a term and as an establishment has always been synonymous with local council. In this case, the aspirants chosen words, circuitously infer, that members of other parties e.g. LNP would not have the same appreciation.
Moving on, the same paragraph continues:
“I also appreciate the cost of living pressures residents are facing”.
Are you laughing yet, ALP advocates and devotees appreciating cost of living pressures? After massive hikes in living costs these past few years under Labor State and Federal how can we take them seriously. However, this had me thinking, perhaps they do actually have an understanding of sorts on the basis that the policies they seek to legislate, are for the greater good of the “community” and broadly, society. They may actually believe this passionately, as both conservatives and progressives act on well-rooted passions with the same vigour and conviction of righteousness, with both camps driven by similar moral foundations. Moreover, our differences ensure that a lack of understanding will endure. Ask a progressive and he/she will happily assert that conservatives are “bad”, driven mostly by greed and/or personal objectives. Conversely, conservatives have a better though not complete understanding of how progressives or those of the left think. I am not suggesting that this makes conservatives better just dissimilar. Both camps have entrenched differences in moral philosophy that causes each to view the world differently. However, what of the legitimacy of each, who is right, who is wrong?
It is not surprising that Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion is generating interest. His argument that conservatives appreciate the arguments of progressives far better than progressives the beliefs of the conservative is compelling because Haidt is an academic (Professor of Psychology), a Democrat in the U.S. and, a proud member of the left. He draws this conclusion from a large volume of evidence and formulates “six passions” from which all of us construct our various political suppositions. As one reviewer put it:
“Jonathan Haidt is a world leader in the new discipline of cultural psychology, which combines the psychologist’s understanding of what goes on inside our heads with the anthropologist’s interest in the social meanings that surround us. Cultural psychology applies the principles of Darwinian natural selection to problems about morality, consciousness and human existence, and Haidt believes that it offers definitive evidence"-based solutions to the problems that have been baffling philosophers since the dawn of civilisation.”
One of the moral foundations or passions Haidt formulates is care/harm for which he means the drive to compassion for others. This foundation is typically where members of the left claim a far higher moral resolve than those of the right. There are six foundations cited in all, but the author notes that progressives and conservatives share only three. The ideologies differ because the latter have a further three foundations that progressives do not share. The care/harm foundation is shared as is fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression. The remaining unshared conservative foundations are loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and sanctity/degradation.
I recommend this text as a resource for those seeking a better understanding of what partitions us politically however as I indicated earlier, questions relating to validity, who is right, who is wrong, remain unanswered. The last chapter is particularly compelling as Haidt asserts that we need the insights of all that is liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation. Though I hasten to add, it may not be as compelling for a progressive.
Back to our wannabe local councillor, I cannot understand why he mentions the ALP in his communications; surely someone ought have advised him to avoid it.
Video: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives
Postscript:
Incidentally, it is no surprise too, that we see the term “community” appearing and in just about all centre left – left political advertising. A common idiom that gets under my skin for it correlates to socialist ideals that contravene pursuits of excellence by, heaven forbid; individual actions unconstrained by bureaucracy and collectivist forces. I am not sure whom to blame for initiating the term and its persistent use by leftist politicians though Joan Kirner comes to mind.
Mitt Romney reintroduced himself to the country Thursday night in Tampa, delivering a deeply personal nomination acceptance address that balanced pledges to fix the economy and critiques of President Obama with stories about his own life and where he comes from.
There is little doubt that Obama brought a powerful promise of hope, albeit of superficial nature back in '08 but his Presidency has not lived up to the hype - a point brought home by Mitt Romney in Tampa.
An excellent speech, exuding plenty of confidence and warmth. He opened up about his faith and spoke about his family. But for mine the highlight was his eagerness to restore within the foundation of political discourse and culture qualities of individualism and self-reliance. Something I'm hoping the conservative side of politics will also restore in Australia post Rudd/Gillard.
The recent High Court rejection of the tobacco's constitutional challenge to the Federal Government's plain packaging laws got me thinking about this Governments assault on individual liberty, big Government political culture in Australia and what Tony Abbott must - not ought do - to counter it and thus create a lasting legacy for his term/s of office.
Kill protectionist measures designed to shield local manufacturers in Government tendering
Means test student tertiary loan schemes
Reduce top public servant salaries
Reduce company tax rates
Repeal the Alcopops tax
Allow the states to rule on approvals for major environmental projects
Repeal the mining tax
Repeal the fair work act
Permit individuals to directly negotiate terms of employment with employers
Offload SBS Television
Reduce the baby bonus to $1,500 down from $5,437 and remove any income tests associated with it
Kill all Government funded nanny state ads
Kill the first home owners grant
Put a cap on Government spending based on a percentage of Gross Domestic Product
Privatise the CSIRO
Kill off all subsidies to the local car industry
End the Commonwealth grants commission
Repeal the carbon tax and the renewable energy target, do away with the clean energy fund, close down the Department of Climate Change and withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol
Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act
Generally, I'm known to most nearly all as Otto, my everyday designation, though my birth name is Ottavio. In addition to what I have stated in "about blog", I am partial to free market driven economies, free trade principles and the freedom for individuals to structure their own lives without Government interference. I would staunchly advocate that the "individual" is greater than any collective. I am socially conservative and support traditional morality and social structure. I champion fiscally conservative Governments - economic liberalism. However, not the subject of this blog, I also campaign for the continuance and preservation of global American dominance. I enjoy writing about that which interests me; I do so to impart knowledge and understanding, and to put both an individual spin and my own distinctive sensibility and perception on my chosen subject matter.
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