An Entertaining Tutorial In Spotting Politicians’ Bullshit

25 Jan

Now it seems to me, dear reader, that there are two ways in which to approach the issue of politicians’ ceaseless lying.

Like your humble blogger, you can simply adopt a sound base position: That everything a politician says is almost certainly a lie-by-omission, half-truth, distortion, obfuscation, misdirection, or indeed, a bald-faced lie:

“I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me .. NOTHING .. ZERO.”

- George Carlin

Or, you can enjoy learning HOW they are deceiving you, by listening very closely, with a very sceptical ear, to every word they say.

Here’s the late, legendary George Carlin explaining the latter method:

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How Selfish Old People Ruined The Environment

17 Jan

Taking a break from blogging. But had to share this:

A Note From An 80 Year-Old About “Being Green”

Now that I’m 80 years young, I can tell all the younger people I know where to go with their “Being Green”.

At the checkout stand in the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should become more “Green” by bringing her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation didn’t care enough to save our environment.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an energy consuming escalator or elevator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a gas guzzling car, truck or SUV every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed our baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

When away from home, we drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a disposable cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour gas burning taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

Remember: Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.

Simple wisdom. Borne of a lifetime of … life experience.

Which is why I wrote this last year – No More Mañana Or Bananas In A Parliament Of Nanna’s

This blogger longs for the day when we will all choose (once again) to properly esteem and value the wisdom of our elders:

Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions”) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true or right coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.

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Will You Take Time For Small Change In 2012?

31 Dec

Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing over the past two years.

My challenge to us all for 2012 is this.

Think small.

May God bless you and yours.

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Hope Remains – MSM Most Distrusted “Institution” In Oz

31 Dec

It’s true! Hope does spring eternal!

Keep right on disbelieving, dear reader:

Only one organisation in Australia is viewed, statistically speaking, as totally untrustworthy: the media. The scoop in the 2010 Australian Election Survey, published this week, wasn’t so much that the messenger finished last but that the gap between us and the political institutions we are supposed to hold to account was so wide.

Only 17 per cent of voters polled at the last election had confidence in the press, compared with 53 per cent for the Australian political system, 41 per cent for the public service and 31 per cent for the political parties.

Still a long way to go on disbelief in the political “system”. And in the “parties”.

And sadly, a very long way to go on disbelief in the “Banks and financial institutions”:

Click to enlarge

But at least we are heading in the right direction with distrust for our mainstream “news” sources.

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Brace Yourself, Here Comes Your 37% Bigger Clean Energy Future Power Bill

30 Dec

Illustration by Zeg | Click to enlarge

Wonderful thing, this carbon dioxide derivatives scheme scam.

Even more wonder full … the Treasury department’s modelling of it.

Bend over and grab your ankles Australia. Here comes your Clean Energy Future power bill.

From the Australian:

The carbon tax will push up electricity prices by about double the 10 per cent nominated in Treasury modelling for some of the nation’s biggest industrial power users.

The biggest electricity users will face power price rises of about 20 per cent, sparking warnings that it will severely damage elements of the nation’s manufacturing sector…

National Generators Forum chairman Trevor St Baker said industrial power users would face higher proportionate electricity price rises compared with residential power users. This is because many big power users have contracts at lower rates than those paid by residential users.

Some of the biggest power users pay about 10c a kilowatt hour, while many others pay from 12c to 17c/kWh. Residential customers pay about 21c/kWh.

Treasury argues that power companies will pass through about 85 per cent of the carbon price, equating to a price rise of 1.95c/kWh for all users.

Oh, well that’s alright then. Just don’t mention that the Australian Energy Market Commission has reported that residential power users can expect a 37% increase in their bills (more below).

This would equate to a 19.5 per cent electricity rise for a big user with a contract price of 10c/kWh and about 13 per cent for a user with a contract of about 15c/kWh.

“The reality is that the little Victorian factories and factories all over the country are going to be affected,” Mr St Baker said. “There needs to be a circuit breaker. These are people who are employing people in the most marginal import-competing jobs. And they are all going to go overseas.”

…

Queensland Nationals senator Ron Boswell said the carbon tax would impose another cost on manufacturers on top of the high dollar. He said many businesses would be caught unawares by the increase in electricity prices when the carbon price takes effect from July 1 next year.

“The cost is bigger when you add the cost of renewable energy,” Senator Boswell said. “Renewable energy could take the increased costs up to 30 per cent.”

There goes the (manufacturing) neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, now that the carbon “tax” legislation has been rammed home by Green-Labor and the “Independents”, the lamestream media has gone all quiet on the true consequences.

As Keith Orchison at Business Spectator notes (emphasis added):

Given the supposedly “white hot” community views on electricity prices – which we were assured back in March was the voter mindset as NSW went to the polls and which we may see play a role in the upcoming Queensland election – there was surprisingly little mainstream media follow-through in December on an important report delivered to the Council of Australian Governments’ energy ministers committee.

The critical point in the report prepared by the AEMC [Australian Energy Market Commission] is that we can expect a rise of 37 per cent in power bills across the country between 2010-11 and 2013-14. In other words, a householder paying $1,500 a year for electricity today can expect to be forking out about $2,050 in 2013-14.

On the AEMC’s estimates, the two states with the most consumers – NSW and Queensland, with 4.5 million residential account holders between them, half the national total – will be the ones to see the highest prices rises: 33 per cent south of the Tweed and 32.2 per cent north of the river.

The AEMC breakdown of costs sees networks (transmission and distribution) contributing half of the increases across the country with wholesale energy prices (including the impact of a carbon charge) adding 40 per cent.

No Keith.

The lack of mainstream media follow through is not surprising at all.

They are the sand that the mainstream masses have their heads buried in.

Their job is done.

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China Stops Encouraging Foreign Investment

30 Dec

Riddle me this.

A “developing” nation of 1.3 billion people, a country that is supposedly the “engine of growth” for “a new era” in the world economy, stops encouraging foreign investment in its local car manufacturing industry.

Meanwhile, a “developed” nation of 22 million people, a country that survives on digging huge holes and selling its coking coal and iron ore for steel production to said “booming” nation, not only actively encourages foreign “investment in” (read “ownership of”) all its vital industries (agriculture, mining, manufacturing) … it gives $25 million to the world’s biggest (foreign) car maker to build a car it was going to build anyway … sends billions in “stimulus” overseas to buy carcinogenic pink batts and crappy flat screens … and all the while, its Treasurer constantly bleats his continued expectation of a “huge pipeline of investment” to salvage the nation’s savaged finances.

Tell me … which of these two nations’ politicians are best serving the long term interests of their own people?

From Bloomberg:

China will stop encouraging foreign investment in car manufacturing to allow for “healthy development” of a market that saw sales growth plummet to a tenth of last year’s pace.

The change ends seven years of foreign-investor benefits including reduced tariffs on imported plant equipment, said Jenny Gu, a senior market analyst at LMC Automotive in Shanghai…

SAIC Motor Corp., the nation’s largest listed automaker, rose 4.1 percent to 13.88 yuan in Shanghai trading today, it’s biggest gain in almost two weeks…

The nation’s automobile manufacturers association estimated that 2011 deliveries may grow by the least in 13 years as a rollback in policies aimed at encouraging buyers curtailed purchases.

So, China doesn’t want more cars produced? Because a dramatic fall in sales is another red flag that the “China bubble” is bursting?

Or, they just want to guard their own economic destiny?

In either conclusion, by contrast our own politicians are made to look exactly like the short-sighted, self-centred, traitorous sell-outs that they really are.

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An Average Aussie Unloads On The Average Labor Pollie

30 Dec

Reader “Tomorrow’s Serf” has a thoughtful word or many for modern Labor:

And so this is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over……

We been forced to watch as our fantastic country has been poured down the toilet towards economic disaster by a bunch of, at best, incompetent, and at worst, treasonous fools and morons.

We have housing going down, retailing going down, mining slowing down, shares and stocks going down, (and up a bit and then down some more) economic activity everywhere going down, employment going down, happiness going down.

And interest rates, they’re going down……but not for long. And when they too start going up, that’s when the S will really H the F!!

Well something’s got to be going up! That’s right, government debt levels (last check, it was $228 billion??), unemployment, mortgage stress, senior executive salaries, politicians salaries (did Craig Thompson get a 40 percent pay rise too for his contributions to the sex industry?). Food prices, fuel prices, electricity prices. Then there’s the increasing number of useless bureaucrats, increasing taxes and surchages, fees and tariffs. Fines and penalties too. Yep, there’s lots of things going up.

I sit here in chilly old Bremen, Northern Germany, suffering from catastrophic global warming (BRRRRR!! NOT), enjoying my front-row seat watching first hand the implosion of that brilliant piece of social and economic engineering, the european union, implode in real time. Who designed this mess? Probably a politician, a bureaucrat or a banker. Probably a mix of all three!! And to think that the silly old Greeks jiggled their books, with the help of our old friends from Goldman Sachs (Hi Mal, we’re watching you) to be allowed in. I wonder if, now that the european credit card has been thoroughly maxed out, and the bill is now due, whether they think, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was such a good idea to join. Anyone for an Austerity Riot??

Which makes me wonder about the wisdom of we Aussies allowing ourselves to be dragged into the next great social and economic experiment, APEC. The Asia Pacific Economic Council. But Julia seems to think it makes good sense. She was recently running around the Pacific somewhere, minding someone else’s business, as she does, bleating about Free Trade, and closer ties. You know, all the usual stuff.

But this is the same woman/politician who thinks other things are good ideas too. Things like NBN’s, Pink Batts, BER’s, MRRT’s (just as the mining boom busts), MDBA’s (because you can’t let farmers have water to irrigate – hell, they might grow some food), Carbon Taxes (sorry, make that a Bankster generated, Carbon Dioxide Derivative Trading Platform), shutting down the live cattle trade in the NT, shutting down the coal mining industry, stopping logging activities in Tassy, flip-flopping on flogging uranium to India, blowing out the Federal Budget to around $230 billion in 4 years, giving cash handouts to support Asian electronics industries, encouraging people smuggling, and appointing a global corporation like Serco (who the hell is Serco, anyway??) to run our Gulags for us, again at considerable cost to the long-suffering taxpayer.

If you wanted to destroy the economic structure and fabric of a nation, you couldn’t make a better choice than appointing the current Labor government.

Not that I think this is really a “Labor” government. Labor was the party of the working man. The guy who rolled his sleeves up and worked hard, played hard, drank hard. You know who I mean. The bloke you couldn’t help but admire. So he voted for his political team, like my tradie mates still do. Fair enough. But they mis-spelt “Labor”. They are being conned by the modern Labor politician. Today’s Labor pollie has never handled a shovel, can’t wire up a house, couldn’t fix an engine, can’t change a washer or a light bulb, and has certainly never milked a cow or driven a tractor.

What he/she can do is think up smarmy one-liners to insult his constituents, he can stare straight into a TV camera and lie with conviction about giving a rats arse about the average punter. Today’s Labor politician is adept at explaining unusual official Credit Card activity at brothels and restaurants (Craig), is not above threatening staff members at hospitality venues with the loss of their jobs if a table isn’t immediately made available for them (eh Belinda), is a master of the “late night meeting” with “business associates” hoping to secure “NO BID” mining leases all over the country side. He is a whizz at lining his own pocket at the expense of the citizen. He/she are charlatans.

This mob is not the Real McCoy. It’s a wolf in sheeps’ clothing. It’s a cobbled-together mish mash of self interested “Save the Worlders” with a bunch of political opportunists with economics and law degrees and stints at the UN (like Craig Emerson our Trade Minister) Anthony Albanese (remember him with his smarmy side swipe at “the Convoy of NO Confidence” calling it instead “the Convoy of No Consequence”.)

It’s a mob trading on the fond memory of probably well meaning and patriotic Labor politicians of days gone by. Chifley, Curtin. Those guys. They’d roll over in their graves if they could see this current lot.

No, I’m afraid this lot aren’t there for us. Nobody could be THIS bad by accident. And if it’s not accidental, then it’s deliberate. And if it’s deliberate, then it’s treason.

And that’s a hanging offense (or should be).

We’ve asked for an election. We’ve demanded an election, and they laughed at us and gave us a Carbon Tax. They’ve lied, cheated, given themselves a 40 percent pay rise whilst battlers who voted for them (and those of us who didn’t) struggle.

Maybe we just have to occupy Federal Parliament and have them arrested!!

It’s time to call a spade a Bloody Shovel. Yes indeed, it’s long past time.

I feel better having gotten that off my chest…

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Our Second Biggest Market Slumps, “Fundamentally On A Downward Slope”

30 Dec

Started out, just drinkin’ beer
I didn’t know how or why
Or what I was doin’ there
Just a couple more
Made me feel a little better
Believe me when I tell you
It was nothin’ to do with the letter

Sometimes I wonder
What all these chemicals
Are doin’ to my brain
Doesn’t worry me enough
To stop me from doin’ it agai-ai-ain
Wipin’ out brain cells
By the millions but I don’t care
It doesn’t worry me
Even though
I ain’t got a lot to spare-are-are

- The Nips Are Getting Bigger, Mental As Anything

If Treasurer Swan had enough grey matter to comprehend what is happening in the global economy Ponzi, then he’d probably be turning to the drink by now.

Because Japan’s economy is getting smaller.

From Bloomberg:

Japan’s rebound from the March earthquake and tsunami sputtered in November as production and retail sales tumbled, deepening the nation’s return to the deflation that first took hold a decade ago.

Industrial output slumped 2.6 percent from October, more than all the forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of 29 economists, a government report showed today in Tokyo. Retail sales slid 2.1 percent…

“Fundamentally, Japan’s economy is on a downward slope,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp. “Exports are falling and negatively impacting Japan’s economy due to the global slowdown.”

…

“Industrial production is unlikely to recover to” levels seen before the 2008 global financial crisis, Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities Japan Ltd., said before today’s reports.

Other data also suggest Japan’s recovery may be stalling. Exports fell for the second straight month in November from a year earlier and capital spending in the third quarter dropped 9.8 percent.

Japan is our second biggest export market.

According to DFAT, as of October 2011 … before the November slump reported by Bloomberg … our exports to Japan were worth 62% of our exports to China:

The world’s third largest economy is also the most debt-laden nation on the planet:

Click to enlarge

Back in June we brought you the warning that our biggest economic danger could be hiding in plain sight.

It’s worth recapping:

Buy a farm house in the middle of nowhere, pick up a gun or two, prepare for hyperinflation and brace for a catastrophic bankruptcy. Thirty minutes with hedge-fund manager J. Kyle Bass has you wanting to do all of the above.

The head of Dallas-based Hayman Advisors LP isn’t thinking about Greece or even Spain but Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy. He says his bet against Japanese government bonds is even “more compelling” than his gamble to sell short U.S. subprime-mortgage debt, which earned him $500 million in 2007.

Shorting Japan has been a losing proposition in recent years. But the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis altered the outlook for a nation whose debt is more than double the size of the economy. Bass says a collapse is inevitable, making Japan’s 10-year bonds — they yield 1.3 percent, among the lowest in the world — a natural for a bear investor.

His argument is this: Japan now spends half of its central- government revenue on servicing debt. This task won’t get any easier as the country’s population ages and shrinks — provided rates stay the same. What’s more, the price tag for the earthquake and its effects will far exceed Japan’s initial $300 billion estimate, pushing the country over the edge. In Bass’s view, the biggest asset bubble ever is hiding in plain sight.

Feel like a drink?

It’s almost NYE after all.

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Why We Could Replace The RBA With 5 Bits Of Paper And A Hat

29 Dec

Why do we listen to any of these bozos?

Ever.

And why do we pay them $1m annual salaries?!

Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens argues that economic forecasts should not be seen as handed down from the oracles.

Umm. We’re paying you $1.05m per year mate. Tell us something we don’t know.

He had the Reserve Bank staff review their own accuracy and found that 12 months into the future, they got the gross domestic product number right to within 0.5 percentage points only 20 per cent of the time.

Brilliant.

Our long term “trend growth” is around 2.5% (and falling).

And yet, the RBA’s self-review shows that these elite economic forecasters only get their GDP growth forecast accurate to within about 20% … on one-in-five occasions.

I have a suggestion.

Sack the lot of them. Abolish the RBA. And replace them with a hat containing 5 slips of paper. The slips can be marked in 0.5% increments, from 1% through 3%.

The World’s Greatest Treasurer can draw one slip of paper out of the hat for the May budget. And another for the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) update.

Voila!

Economic forecasting of equal accuracy to the RBA’s elite, criminally overpaid #JAFA’s.

Imagine how much taxpayer money we would save.

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Boom State Busts

29 Dec

The WA government has revised its 2011-12 budget forecast downwards … by more than 50%:

The West Australian government has slashed its projected surplus by more than $200 million because of risks in the global economy, weaker royalties, a weak housing market and the high Australian dollar.

WA is expected to record a $209 million surplus, making it the nation’s highest surplus for 2011-12.

But the projected surplus is significantly lower than the $442 million forecast at budget time.

The figure was released on Wednesday as part of the Liberal-National government’s mid-year review.

Reasons given?

Treasurer Christian Porter said there had been many changes to the global economy since the May state budget.

“There’s been one single unanticipated economic phenomena that has occurred since the time of delivering the budget in May, which has had a very significant impact on the WA state economy – that is the events that are unfolding in Europe.

“It is self-evident that what’s going on in Europe is very serious.”

Mr Porter said the European sovereign debt crisis and a slower than expected recovery in the US economy had been major factors in the revised estimates.

He said the royalty revenue had been revised downwards to $970 million over the budget and forward estimates period because of a higher $US/$A exchange rate and the impact of lower iron ore, oil and base metals prices.

Mr Porter said that while the European Union accounted for just six per cent of WA’s merchandise exports, it provided 20 per cent of China’s exports, which could affect WA.

He said that if conditions in Europe worsened and negatively affected the availability and cost of credit, major resource projects in WA could be delayed.

Anything else?

… the housing market remains weak with both house prices and sales volumes lower than the budget forecasts.

And the future beyond the next 6 months?

Budget surpluses are still forecast until 2013/14 though these too have been revised significantly downwards.

Why?

Softening iron ore prices over the last six months have hit the State Government’s revenue projections hard, with Treasurer Christian Porter forecasting an almost billion dollar drop in mining royalties in the state over the next four years.

Speaking to reporters today Mr Porter said the government has slashed $951 million from its projections of mining royalties, with almost $820 million coming off iron ore royalties alone over the next four years.

This is despite the State Government increasing royalty rates on fines iron ore from 5.25 per cent to 6.5 per cent from July next year, and up to 7.5 per cent from the following financial year.

The State Government’s mid year financial review forecast a steady fall in iron ore prices over the next four years, however, following sharp falls in spot prices earlier this year as uncertainty over European debt and the health of the Chinese economy hit markets.

So, our “boom” state is now expecting a bust.

Of 50%+.

What was it that Senator Joyce said in response to the Federal government’s “truly extraordinary” May budget forecast?

Opposition frontbencher Barnaby Joyce has taken a swipe at the Gillard government’s approach to the economy, saying it had an unbounded belief in Asia’s demand for Australia’s resources.

“God help you when the prices go down,” he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

The government’s approach to economics was “a clever ability to charge people to dig up red and black rocks.”

“They (government) have an unbounded belief that the people in South-East Asia will have an eternal gratitude to pay an excessive price for red rocks and black rocks.”

And what did he say in September (a must-read)?

Australia avoided recession because of the export of red rocks (called iron ore) and black rocks (called coal) in record volumes at record prices, record shipments of wheat, a 425 basis point drop in interest rates and a comparatively low dollar.

…

Wayne Swan likes to regularly point to Australia’s $400 billion investment pipeline but he doesn’t control that. That is a promise of someone else’s benevolence. What he does control is the public sector debt and it is going through the roof.

Barnaby was right.

Again.

Now, about that revised fudged $1.5bn Federal government budget surplus, forecast for 18 months away.

Wayne? … Wayne?!?!

Oh, of course. Silly me. We don’t need to hear it again.

We all know the mantra by now:

“Our economy has blah blah strong fundamentals blah blah low debt blah blah trend growth blah blah a huge investment pipeline.”

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