Conroy you dumb bastard, come here !

You are the stupidest power-hungry tyrant to be empowered with ministerial responsibility in the history of Australian politics.

Come on.. I dare you. Watch this website. Monitor it closely. I know you want to. You might learn a thing or too.

The Federal Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with official documents singling out a website critical of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy

Private vs Public sector.

Public transport is a fricking disaster.

(the above sentence applies equally for public health and education)

The latest doom and gloom comes in an Age article titled..

Hard-times just the ticket for public transport.

Most socialists need only glance at the above headline and immediately begin with their usual script full of the empty talking points which are easily demolished through logic, and repeatedly refuted through evidence and facts.

Those talking points are as follows:

• Not enough funding ! The government has been and continues to deprive "the system" of sufficient resources (This talking point comes from public transport lobby groups, unions and the ABC )
  
• Poor and dumb planning. (Usually the opposition political parties and media figures recite this one)
• Unregulated free markets are to blame !! (From the ABC and the hard left)
  

Each of these arguments is vague and shallow. Not a single fan of public transport would care to tell us what sufficient funding is. Nor would they tell us what "good planning" is. And the 3rd falsheood is all too easy to trot out, by asserting that free markets exist everywhere and that no act of government played any role in creating or exacerbating the problems.

Yet ... history clearly and unambiguously reveals that each new decade brings about more and more funding for each public sector industry, more and more efforts placed into planning and regulation, and more pages of regulation and greater government ownership than before.

The exceptions are the success stories - when government privatised AND DEREGULATED industries like telecommunications, banking, transport, trade, commerce and hospitality.

The leftists cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot place thousands of regulations on a semi-privatised public transport sector, where only the train operator bids for the government contract to operate a monopoly, and then give their usual knee-jerk reaction of blaming free markets/privatisation when things go wrong.

Back to the story:

THE deteriorating economy is adding to Melbourne's public transport woes, with commuters boarding trains, trams and buses to save money.

A survey of 600 people by public transport marketing and information agency Metlink has found that 75 per cent of Melburnians are trying to save money because of worries over the economy. As a result, a third are looking to use public transport more to cut their budgets.

Read that paragraph. What is the actual news item being reported ?

More people are using public transport.

Why is this "bad" or "grim" news ? ?! Isn't this what the government wants us to do ? They tell us not to use our cars, they place stamp duty, registration, fuel taxes and parking restrictions everywhere, they tell us to catch more trains and do our bit for "the environment".

Could you imagine the same response for any single private industry out there ?
If more people buy televisions, or groceries, or go out to the movies, or go out to restaurants, would that particular industry complain ? No, they would be overjoyed and do their best to serve all these willing customers.

I think even the most hard-core statists, the advocates of socialised health, medicine, education and transport, realise deep-down some of the inherent problems in their huge plans to spend our money on their personal priorities for society, but fail to publicly acknowledge them.

The best overview of the subprime collapse

An 86 minutes long video. This is it.

Boy was this crisis a failure of government regulation and socialism.

The economic boom !

In troubled times, where is this safe-haven that provides high and rising wages, widespread employment and rising standards of living ?

Canberra !!

Employee Earnings and Household Incomes

Average weekly full-time adult ordinary time earnings in Canberra are approximately A$1,280 per week, which is 16 per cent higher than the Australian average. However, as noted earlier, output per capita of Canberra workers is 31 per cent above the national average.

Earnings and the high workforce participation rate are also reflected in disposable household income figures for Canberra. The gross household disposable income per capita at A$49,923 is around 61 per cent higher in Canberra than the national average.

Modern Telecommunications Infrastructure

The high quality of infrastructure serving Canberra provides many advantages to businesses. Canberra was one of the first cities in the world to introduce a broadband fibre-optic network, and the ACT ranks alongside Singapore, Finland, Sweden and the USA as having one of the world’s most IT-connected communities.

Operating a Business in Canberra

There are more than 25,000 businesses in Canberra covering almost every conceivable form of activity and business structure. They range in size from multinationals that have strategically chosen Canberra so they can be close to the Australian Government’s A$200 billion procurement decisions, right down to micro businesses servicing larger businesses, the public sector or the needs of local people.

They range in size from multinationals that have strategically chosen Canberra so they can be close to the Australian Government’s A$200 billion procurement decisions, right down to micro businesses servicing larger businesses, the public sector or the needs of local people.

Workforce

Canberra’s workforce comprises approximately 200,000 people, made up of 190,000 residents and approximately 10,000 people who commute from nearby population centres in New South Wales. About 115,000 Canberrans are employed in the Territory’s private sector, with the balance employed in the public sector. [ 200,000 - 115,000 = 85,000 public servants !]

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The chief minister of the A.C.T provides the following factoids:

• the ACT record low unemployment rates - the ACT’s current unemployment rate of 2.7 per cent in May 2008 is well below the rate in any other jurisdiction;
• an average weekly wage in Canberra about $180 more than the national average.
• increased expenditure on health, which has almost doubled from 2001-02 to 2008-09;

Yes, Canberra, mafia headquarters, is where a lot of the stolen loot is handed out !

Stimulating our debt

How can I possibly debunk each and every fallacy, idiocy and lunacy presented in the:

$42 Billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan

I think these monumental wastes of capital and destruction of wealth and savings speak for themselves:

• Free ceiling insulation for around 2.7 million Australian homes

• Build or upgrade a building in every one of Australia's 9,540 schools

• Build more than 20,000 new social and defence homes

• $950 one off cash payments to eligible families, single workers, students, drought effected farmers and others

• A temporary business investment tax break for small and general businesses buying eligible assets

• Significantly increase funding for local community infrastructure and local road projects

I've always been complaining about welfare and government spending from a moral and philosophical point of view. It is all too easy to attack welfare from a practical point of view, saying that it goes to "bludgers" and "cheats".

But the real hazards behind the system, the very essence of why an extensive welfare system is immoral, and the very rationale that is articulated so clearly by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, is the following:

That people can present their *needs* as a claim on the property and liberty of others.

And thus each and every need (including failures, mistakes and idleness) are ultimately what are rewarded and compensated by government.

Our government occasionally lets the mask slip, to reveal that this very principal and philosophy is at the core of every regulation. Every single "stimulus" measure is carefully designed to exclude the self-sufficient, and those with a good income. Every single stimulus measure rewards failure of some kind.

Build 500 new science laboratories and language learning centres in schools that can demonstrate need.

Urgent maintenance to upgrade around 2,500 vacant social house

$950 Farmer's Hardship Bonus paid to around 21,500 drought affected farmers and farm dependent small business owners receiving exceptional circumstances related income support.

$950 per child Back to School Bonus to support 2.8 million children from low- and middle-income families.

At least 20,000 low-income households will be assisted by having access to secure and affordable public or community housing.

You see my point already ?

Every dollar the government spends is forcibly taken from somebody else who earned it. They are being compelled to pay for certain things. Those certain things are all justified on the basis of need. Nothing more and nothing less.