The SMH announces as its headline Bill of rights to rein in Parliament which sounds great in theory but when you read underneath you get this (emphases added):
AUSTRALIA is a step closer to getting a bill of rights, which could enshrine rights to free speech and non-discrimination. The Federal Government is set to begin a consultation process into what the document should look like next week.
Read more »
A friend in the US has recently set up her own blog called Pink elephant parade. Subtitled ‘politically incorrect commentary on the news behind the news’ it is written from a thoughtful generally conservative perspective. It is only a few days old. In one of her earlier posts she discusses the recent ridiculous lawsuit launched against eHarmony by gay rights activists. Read more »
A clip from Ken Burns’ Jazz of one of Louis Armstrong’s most masterful performances, West End Blues, made with his Hot Fives at the relatively young age of 27. Read more »
New CIS research fellow Stephen Kirchner has produced a policy monograph on Capital xenophobia (PDF)which is an update of the last one written in 1984 by Wolfgang Kasper to take account of the recent development of sovereign wealth funds. Some excerpts from the Conclusion: Read more »
Ziggy Switowski in today’s Australian makes the case for nuclear energy including the obvious argument that there has never been a better time to reassess our stubborn opposition to nuclear power when people are obsessing over low-carbon fuel sources. Among the facts cited in his piece: Read more »
Obama’s core economic team has been revealed to consist of New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary, Larry Summers as White House economic director, Peter Orszag as head of the Congressional Budget Office and Christina Romer as head of the Council of Economic Advisers.
These are some very interesting picks. Read more »
As regulars will know, we recently had a hacking and had to reconfigure our new digs.
If you are a new commenter and you register your very first comment will be put into the moderation queue to verify you are not spam but once it is released you are free to comment without any restriction. However comments with hyperlinks will still get trapped in moderation until released.
Anyone having any problems commenting should email me at catallaxy AT yahoo DOT com
Me shooting left eyed and left handed and trying to get a sight on the target which is tr Read more »
This piece was written a few months ago but is obviously still relevant. Some extracts: Read more »
Via Tim Blair, this is what it takes to be a saint these days:
After 36 years of self-imposed environmental abstinence, Miss Pick, 67, is now being recognised as an eco-heroine with one of the smallest carbon footprints in the country.
Read more »
The NYT has an article on whether National Review is collapsing. It does seem to have lost a lot of bright people (now apparently David Frum is leaving too). I used to read it in the university library ages ago and it seems more partisan and predictable now than it was before. Nonetheless take the article with a grain of salt as it is the NYT commenting on an ideological rival: Read more »
“We are serious about sex” is the slogan of a new political party to be launched on Thursday.
With 4 million Australians accessing pornography, The Australian Sex Party, says it has a real chance of winning seats in State and Federal parliaments.
Read more »
Interesting piece of irony noted by Steve Sailer:
According to the exit poll, for whatever it’s worth, the key to the passage of Prop. 8 was the huge black turnout in California in support of Barack Obama. Blacks voted 70% in favor of the ban on gay marriage, if the exit poll can be trusted.
I recently discovered an interesting site called Global Subsidies Initiative which links to very useful resources for researchers interested in investigating the range and magnitude of subsidies to various industries across the world. It includes sector briefings with concise essays on how subsidies feature in 5 major sectors - energy, agriculture, fisheries, services and transport - and also provides searchable databases on subsidies. Read more »
When did Arnie start eating quiche? (link via Hit and Run):
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Sunday that his party should regroup by moving away from some of its core conservative principles and embracing spending on programs that Americans want.
Read more »
For those not sick to death of the perennial fractional reserve banking question which seems to vex so many libertarians, Walter Block has more links to both the pro and con side than you could possibly want (scroll down from his exchange with Caplan).
I think the big test of whether the semi-socialistic rhetoric put out by Obama over the campaign was just him playing to the masses or is reflective of some genuine beliefs on his part will be who he picks to be Treasury Secretary. Read more »
As some readers may have noticed we recently got hacked by a group purporting to be Islamists who may or may not have been. So some of you may need to register again and others may have their comments held up in moderation. So bear with us. And in the meantime post your thoughts about the Obama win here.
People my age often don’t have much first hand experience of why Reagan is constantly referred to as the Great Communicator and why even the likes of Obama have to acknowledge his powers of persuasion. But even those of an older generation haven’t seen the full force of those powers.
Commenter JC has unearthed a gem of a performance below by Ronald Reagan which can be seen in the YouTube below. Interesting retrospective in light of the US elections. Read more »
This piece was published a few days ago talking about a split in the ANC over left-right and personality differences which has led to the formation of a new party:
A key development came during last year’s ANC conference in Polokwane, when then President Thabo Mbeki lost his fight with Mr Zuma to remain party president.
Mr Zuma’s supporters went on to force Mbeki loyalists out of key positions of power, and Mr Mbeki was forced to step down as president in September.
Read more »
Michael Costa on the Liberal party:
If the conservative parties, particularly the Liberal Party, stand for anything it is: the sanctity of property rights, fiscal conservatism and support for the private sector. In all three areas NSW conservatives have departed from their core beliefs and damaged their electoral prospects …
Read more »
Brian Fisher, one of the directors of the firm I work for and former ABARE-head, tackles some myths perpetuated over the emissions trading debate:
Myth 1: Australia has been an inveterate laggard on climate change
Read more »
Whilst Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy are busy at the Commonwealth level with their plans for a ‘Great Firewall of Australia’ to censor “protect the children ™”, it seems South Australian Attorney-General Micheal Atkinson is apparently doing his bit for “protecting the children ™” too: Read more »
From Reason:
The Cato Institute has done excellent work over the last few years tracking the shift in the libertarian vote—the roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of the American public that can be categorized as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
Read more »
With the Australian economy now generally expected to experience lower growth, telco industry commentators have started to speculate on how this might impact the local market. Some analysts see the telecoms sector riding out the storm relatively well, whilst others are less optimistic. It may also be that tougher economic conditions accelerate some of the substitution trends already putting pressure on telcos.
Continue below the fold to find out who’s saying what and what those substitution trends are…
It just gets worse and worse. Now in order to pass their ill conceived filtering scheme for the Internet which many technical experts warn may lead to horse-drawn carriage like speeds, Labor may have to deal with Steve Fielding who wants more: Read more »
Here’s Bob Dylan’s tribute to the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce who was dogged by obscenity trials through most of his working life.
I’ve been a bit hard on old man government a bit recently, so lets praise or propose some good regulations.
Higher education borrowing: Read more »
People who believe in government are like people who believe in god.
This is my analogy:
Theist argument: How did the universe get here? Well god created it.
Atheist rebuttal: Who created God?
Believer in government: People are bad/irrational/imperfect/evil - we need government.
Libertarian rebuttal: What stops government from being bad/irrational/imperfect/evil. Read more »
Once again Arnold Kling hits the nail on the head:
Anyway, the Post editorial concludes:
“Government-sponsored, upside-only capitalism is the kind that’s in crisis today, and we say: Good riddance.”
That is what I would have said before Paulson came to the rescue. Now, I think that government-sponsored, upside-only capitalism is the only game in town for the foreseeable future.
Read more »
This guy seems a bit premature: http://www.slate.com/id/2202489/ Read more »
A nice lead in from an article in the leftish New York Review of Books: Read more »
Will Wilkinson makes a nice point: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/10/14/fearful-asymmetry/
Basically, if i have no moral right to my whole income, government has no right to rule me either - and take some of my income as tax. Read more »
The Ruddster never misses an opportunity:
Exorbitant executive salaries may get a trim under a Federal Government plan to deal with the “extreme capitalism” at the root of the global financial crisis.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today revealed the government will work with the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) to bring fat-cat pay packets under control.
Read more »
Will we get another reminder from the left blogosphere about how the Nobel Prize in Economics isn’t really a Nobel prize now that one of their favourite sons has won it? Read more »
At the ALS blog, Pommygranate has a round-up of all the latest measures to shore up the financial sector across the world including the recently announced decision to guarantee Australian savings. Pommygranate titles his post ‘Socialism is back’. Read more »
From arnold kling, sometime former freddie mac employee, and all around good guy:
I’m not generally the placard waving type but this is one protest I don’t have any hesitation in promoting.
Kevin Rudd announces plans to pour more money into the worst performing schools and drops his plans for league tables:
KEVIN Rudd will identify the nation’s 1500 poorest-performing schools and flood them with $1.1 billion over the next five years in a front-on attack on inequality of access to education.
Read more »
One for the Ayn Rand fans and even the non-fans.
Rees has canned Iemma’s plan to build a metro line that actually goes somewhere, to building a metro line that goes between central and rozelle.
I know i’ve been overseas for a bit, but don’t we already have a metro line that goes from central to rozelle? ( http://www.metrotransport.com.au/index.php/lightrail/map-2.html ) Read more »
The very interesting Marxists at Strange Times have a relatively old but fascinating post about how they see the Right which should be of interest to readers since libertarians have had similar discussions about the range of desirable political alliances amongst left and right. Read more »
The oddly compelling, eclectic and extremely readable pro-war and pro-technology Australian Marxist site Strange Times argues that Hairshirt Hamilton is to blame for the recent attempts to rival China and Iran in Internet censorship:
Guess who really kick started the current push for mandatory ISP level filtering? No, it wasn’t those wretched Christian fundamentalists, it was Clive Hamilton and the Australia Institute (of which Hamilton was executive director, until recently).
Read more »
Yes the old Sokal hoax is now old hat but is still a lot of fun to read about. Here is an extract from the one of the pomo works parodied by Sokal and quoted by Richard Dawkins in his review of Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Imposture. Read it and weep or laugh: Read more »
The NYT has an article on whether National Review is collapsing. It does seem to have lost a lot of bright people (now apparently David Frum is leaving too). I used to read it in the university library ages ago and it seems more partisan and predictable now than it was before. Nonetheless take the article with a grain of salt as it is the NYT commenting on an ideological rival: Read more »
This is a slight update of part of the post I wrote below but it deserves its own space anyway so here it is again …
The good people at the Supper Club have in store a bumper event in a few weeks when they will bring you a formal panel discussion followed by a party on the theme ‘On prohibition, censorship and human weakness’ with 4 very diverse speakers:
Date: Saturday, 6 December 2008
Venue: The Garden Shed, 437 Darling St, BalmainCost: $50
Time: 6:00-11:30pm
Read more »
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner warns that there will be a second ’stimulus package’ for the economy:
What’s left of the budget surplus could soon go as the Federal Government considers a second spending spree to boost the economy.
The Government last month announced a $10.4 billion economic stimulus package, cutting into its forecast $21.7 billion budget surplus.
Read more »
Reason magazine runs with an interesting piece casting cold water on the idea that the earth can be saved by buying local. Some interesting tidbits: Read more »
The latest person to go loco because of Obama’s victory after the loopy Georgia Congressman who warned of an Obama Marxist dictatorship and Australia’s very own ‘eccentric’ Gonzo blogging identity is the significantly more famous Melanie Phillips who writes that: Read more »
It is testimony to the hyperactive tendencies of the Rudd government that it has more than enough industry plans to go around as fodder to be criticised by more than one op-ed a day.
In the SMH the recently appointed Research Fellow at the CIS, Stephen Kirchener, has a go at the new Kim-Ill-Carr Plan: Read more »
It has been my contention for a while that Obama’s rhetorical bark is worse than his policy bite and once the hoopla has settled down and he goes from speech-making mode to legislating mode he will become a pragmatic centrist Democrat. This profile of Obama’s recently announced chief of staff Rahm Emanuel supports this reading: Read more »
If ‘free market ideology’ has become thoroughly discredited by the financial crisis as so many wishful thinkers on the left have claimed, this has certainly escaped the notice of most Kiwis. Congratulations to the Nationals for winning government and the explicitly free market ACT party for winning 5 seats in Parliament.
When Rudd came in, most people including myself were blase about the extent to which the new government would be interested in reverting towards the dirigiste methods of Old Labor. Rudd did market himself as an ‘economic conservative’. The truth is more complex. While Rudd has instituted a plague of -Watches, he has made tiny steps in market oriented reforms in some areas like vocational education. Read more »
As some regulars may have noticed we got hacked sometime last night by some group claiming to be some Islamist group though it really could’ve been anyone.
While we wait for our old posts to be fed back into the blog, I’ll make this an open forum on the US elections.
People my age often don’t have much first hand experience of why Reagan is constantly referred to as the Great Communicator and why even the likes of Obama have to acknowledge his powers of persuasion. But even those of an older generation haven’t seen the full force of those powers.
Commenter JC has unearthed a gem of a performance below by Ronald Reagan which can be seen in the YouTube below. Interesting retrospective in light of the US elections. Read more »
This piece was published a few days ago talking about a split in the ANC over left-right and personality differences which has led to the formation of a new party:
A key development came during last year’s ANC conference in Polokwane, when then President Thabo Mbeki lost his fight with Mr Zuma to remain party president.
Mr Zuma’s supporters went on to force Mbeki loyalists out of key positions of power, and Mr Mbeki was forced to step down as president in September.
Read more »
Michael Costa on the Liberal party:
If the conservative parties, particularly the Liberal Party, stand for anything it is: the sanctity of property rights, fiscal conservatism and support for the private sector. In all three areas NSW conservatives have departed from their core beliefs and damaged their electoral prospects …
Read more »
Brian Fisher, one of the directors of the firm I work for and former ABARE-head, tackles some myths perpetuated over the emissions trading debate:
Myth 1: Australia has been an inveterate laggard on climate change
Read more »
Whilst Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy are busy at the Commonwealth level with their plans for a ‘Great Firewall of Australia’ to censor “protect the children ™”, it seems South Australian Attorney-General Micheal Atkinson is apparently doing his bit for “protecting the children ™” too: Read more »
From Reason:
The Cato Institute has done excellent work over the last few years tracking the shift in the libertarian vote—the roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of the American public that can be categorized as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
Read more »
With the Australian economy now generally expected to experience lower growth, telco industry commentators have started to speculate on how this might impact the local market. Some analysts see the telecoms sector riding out the storm relatively well, whilst others are less optimistic. It may also be that tougher economic conditions accelerate some of the substitution trends already putting pressure on telcos.
Continue below the fold to find out who’s saying what and what those substitution trends are… Read more »
It just gets worse and worse. Now in order to pass their ill conceived filtering scheme for the Internet which many technical experts warn may lead to horse-drawn carriage like speeds, Labor may have to deal with Steve Fielding who wants more: Read more »
Those expecting an ALP government to be more socially liberal than a Liberal government or at least more sensible about non-economics based issues are in for a shock. As the ALS blog reported a while ago, the government seems to be strongly committed to implementing an ill conceived proposal to filter out child pornography using a scheme that could end up significantly slowing down the Internet in Australia. Read more »
If you can overlook the ridiculous blonde wig this is one electrifying performance of ‘Something’s got a hold on me’ by the great Etta James. But an even better live version which is supercharged because of the audience response shouting and singing along can be found in this CD. Read more »
The good people at the Supper Club are now advertising their talk plus dinner and drinks event for next month which is going to be on What makes great cities?:
What makes great cities?
Read more »
Dr John Montgomery discusses:
Once again Arnold Kling hits the nail on the head:
Anyway, the Post editorial concludes:
“Government-sponsored, upside-only capitalism is the kind that’s in crisis today, and we say: Good riddance.”
That is what I would have said before Paulson came to the rescue. Now, I think that government-sponsored, upside-only capitalism is the only game in town for the foreseeable future.
Read more »
Gerard Henderson on the celebrity economist who is putting his money where his mouth is:
What a month it has been for Professor Keen. In late September he was photographed in The Daily Telegraph along with his partner, Melina Forrest. He, looking at the camera, clad in a white T-shirt with a blue patch on which was printed a quote from the economist John Maynard Keynes. She, standing close and looking admiringly into his eyes.
Read more »
Former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa is proving to be a great provocative columnist, attacking Rudd’s commissar like plans to regulate bankers’ salaries and providing an Austrian school inspired analysis for the current financial woes: Read more »
Read it all here:
McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him …
Read more »
If you think political pressure on fannie and freddie caused this mess, you should be very, very afraid of government run banks (even partial government ownership).
If you think markets react poorly to bubbles and busts, and then market participants don’t have the nerve during a crisis to keep lending, maybe you think bank nationalisation solves the crisis.
I’d have to say i’m more worried about governments than markets, but where do you stand?
Stiglitz on the crisis:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/11/stiglitz200811?currentPage=1
Stiglitz describes market failure … “We are in the midst of micro-economic failure on a grand scale.” then lists a whole bunch of problems, almost exclusively government failures.
Our ethanol policy is also bad for the taxpayer, bad for the environment, bad for the world…it would be hard to invent a worse policy.
Read more »