Month: May 2009

Aspiration now ends at $60k

Posted by Chief Blogger – 19 May, 2009

According to Rudd’s attack on ‘middle-class welfare’:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has defended the Government’s proposed changes to employee share ownership schemes, despite increasing criticism from business and unions.

The Government says the move, which would mean employees would have to pay tax on their shares up front, is designed to target high-income earners who are using the scheme for tax minimisation.

But the business community has been highly critical of the changes, which will catch everyone earning over $60,000.

So basically a new tax on financial prudence and independence. Rudd’s little class war is gearing up.

Mr Rudd says the changes, expected to save the Government $200 million, were needed as part of the Government’s strategy to return the Budget to surplus.

There is a strategy? These share schemes are being closed down by employers due to the tax changes, to the detriment of everyone:

The Shop Assistants Union says it is concerned the changes will completely wipe schemes out.

National secretary Joe de Bruyn says thousands of his members earning less than $60,000 get company shares.

The aspiration threshold will keep getting lowered by Rudd in aid of returning the budget to surplus. A surplus that seems to be missing in all of the government’s budget forecasts. The elusive surplus will now be used like a holy grail to get the pilgrims to sacrifice even more for the cause.

Random issues

Posted by Chief Blogger – 19 May, 2009

From an NRL groupie – “Confessions of football groupie Charmyne Palavi”:

I am old enough and wise enough to know these encounters are nothing more than what they were at the time - mostly consensual, one-on-one sex, on my terms.

Mostly consensual – so the others were rape? This seems to of been missed by the Daily Telegraph sub-editor.

Another Rudd Dudd

Posted by Chief Blogger – 17 May, 2009

Rudd’s home saving accounts have gone the way of most of his ideas:

THE Rudd government’s much-hyped first-home saver accounts are a national flop.

Banks and credit unions say fewer than 4000 of the accounts, which offer a 17 per cent return on deposits, have been opened…Seven institutions reported fewer than 35 accounts opened by eligible customers since the scheme began in October.

We pay for this…

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 May, 2009

SBS has obtained and published what they claim are some of the photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq that Obama has been trying to suppress for fear of a back lash against US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The images emerged from Australia yesterday where they were originally obtained by the channel SBS in 2006 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. They were not distributed around the world at the time but are now believed to be among those the president is trying to block.

Mr Obama previously committed to allowing thousands of images to be published but changed his mind after senior generals warned that their publication could place US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in greater danger.

The president’s change of heart brought bitter criticism from the left wingers and the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought a freedom of information case against the US government applying to see the pictures.

It is not clear that the photos are what SBS purports them to be. Nevertheless, SBS’s intent is clear. By the time the news reaches the Middle East, real or not, the photos will increase the danger of US troops in Afghanistan and therefore increase the risk to Australian troops that are serving next to US forces. And Australian tax-payers are forced to hand over their hard earned money to SBS for the privilege.

Rudd gives Obama a free pass on Holden

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 May, 2009

General (Government) Motors, which is now owned and run by Obama and his union mates, kill off Pontiac and therefore the Pontiac badged Holden made G8. Holden takes a major export hit because, according to the Washington Times:

…falls right in line with the environmental zeitgeist, the new big brother. Killing a muscle car or two, with their small number of sales, will not move the needle on the carbon dioxide front. Pontiac in part is falling victim to the government’s future Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that require cars and light trucks to show major gains every year after next year. The Pontiac G8 GXP had an economy number of 13/20 mpg – and we actually got that 20, too.

Right at the time when G8 sales started to exceed nearly 3000 a month. The Washington Times joins virtually every other major newspaper and auto media outlet in USA in giving a rave review about the Holden made Pontiac G8. Even the New York Times and Boston Globe were impressed.

In all of this where is Rudd? No lobbying, no calls, nothing.

Howard’s response to the budget

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 May, 2009

Howard has pointed to the abolition of Work Choices and the Rudd stimulus programme as adding to the economic downturn:

“Work Choices helped give us the lowest unemployment rate in 33 years,” Mr Howard said.

“The biggest challenge that the Government now faces is stopping unemployment going too high and they are now, by dismantling our industrial relations reforms, they are adding to unemployment…

“By splurging all of this money and adding to our debt enormously, Mr Rudd has actually worsened the situation that has been exported to Australia.

Treasury leadership has basically become an extension of the ALP. They have recommended a series of stimulus measures that when you read the fine print, don’t stimulate at all. As I have written on multiple occasions, evidence written by Treasury foot soldiers to the Senate indicates that the multiplier on the stimulus is only 0.7. For every $1 spent we lose 30 cents, and every dollar is financed by debt, half of which originates from overseas. So that is 80 cents lost to the economy in every Rudd dollar. The remaining 30 cents goes to stimulating the most heavily unionised and government driven sectors of the economy. Then there is Rudd:

“Kevin Rudd’s problem is epitomised in that 7000-word essay (published in The Monthly magazine). I read it and it was a bit of a chore. It was intellectually flawed, internally inconsistent, and historically inaccurate.

“You finished reading it and you had absolutely no idea of what he stands for.”

He stands for himself.

WSJ slams Rudd

Posted by Chief Blogger – 15 May, 2009

The first paragraph in the WSJ’s editorial about the budget:

Australia entered the global financial crisis with one of the soundest fiscal positions among developed nations. Now, thanks to the Labor government of Kevin Rudd, that’s no longer the case.

Pretty definitive. The WSJ pays credit to Costello’s purdent budget management and then gets stuck into Rudd again:

Tuesday’s sea of red comes largely courtesy of Labor’s political agenda, not the global recession.

Which is basically what I wrote a couple of days ago. The fall in revenue has been exaggerated compared to the explosion of spending. It is also broadly consistent with what many commentators are now saying: the budget is about getting Rudd and his image to the next election at the expense of the nation’s finances.

MT’s budget response

Posted by Chief Blogger – 15 May, 2009

A few snippets:

Last year the Treasurer was filled with pride as he proclaimed a surplus built by others.

This year, he was so ashamed he could not bring himself, in a speech of 30 minutes, to even mention the $58 billion deficit he had created himself.

Then the real cause of the massive budget deficit:

Since November 2007 the Labor Government has chosen to increase spending by $124 billion – that is two thirds of the $188 billion debt we will accumulate in just four years.

Then the golden nugget:

…there is one savings measure in this Budget which we will oppose.

The changes to the private health insurance rebate are just the latest phase in Labor’s unrelenting war against private health insurance.

Labor hates private health insurance. Labor hates it because it encourages self-reliance and because it offers choice…

The Prime Minister claims to be concerned about public hospitals and yet I see in his Budget’s Infrastructure document spending on health and hospital infrastructure receives less than ten per cent the amount allocated to his broadband network…

…budgets are indeed about priorities.

Labor’s attack on self-reliance. And the fact that it is a broken election promise seems to have been ignored by large sections of the msm. And the hang-over:

To repay the principal and interest on Labor’s $188 billion debt over the next 10 years will cost taxpayers $25 billion a year – our largest ever surplus, the Coalition’s last, was $20 billion.

And if the debt turns out to be higher – say $250 billion – then the repayments would be $33 billion a year.

Costello’s reaction to the budget

Posted by Chief Blogger – 13 May, 2009

Another conservative Peter Weir film?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 13 May, 2009

It would seem so. National Review ranked Master and Commander as one of the top 25 conservative movies of the last 25 years. Witness (not sure if that is Ronald Reagan’s Witness…) and the Truman Show were also given honourable mentions. One can even see conservative themes in Green Card, where a couple eventually bring themselves in compliance with immigration laws. The Mosquito Coast could also be seen in the same conservative vein, as a movie about a rugged individualist. Dead Poets Society is a little more problematic, although the strength of the individual is again re-affirmed. Then there is The Year of Living Dangerously, which sparked Muslim outrage and was set to the background of Communist skulduggery in Indonesia. And now the following:

The Way Back, which stars Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris, tells the story of a trek to freedom by a group of escapees from a remote Soviet Gulag in 1940.

Now I don’t know Weir’s politics, or even if he has any, but there does appear to be a trend in his movie making towards promoting themes at the heart of the conservative. Freedom, individual liberty, justice and the rule of law. Apparently, The Way Back is based on the life of Slavomir Rawicz and his book “The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom”, which is often found on conservative book lists.