Ian Verrender
Does anyone remember the days of the anti-mining-tax campaign and obscene footage of Twiggy Forrest, one of the most offensively wealthy people in the world, dressed in the uniform of a mine worker, pretending to be one with the working class, while prancing around on national television effectively denying truth and justice to all?
Shall we all applaud the turn of events showcased in this article?
Back in the day, in the Eighties, whence all goodness began, there was a book floating around at my alma mater called "Mineral Economics" (don't ask me who the author is) which introduced and promoted a strange concept. This concept was called a 'resource rent tax'. Now a 'resource rent tax' has a number of mystical semi-miraculous but also arcane characteristics. It doesn't tax investment,
nor capital, but only income and not accrual income but only cash income. It is the saviour of capitalism itself and can transmogrify any abstruse mining company into a soft fluffy family friendly entity capable only of acting in the interests of the nation at large.
The circularity of public discourse is appalling. This concept was applied to the offshore gas and oil industry without any complaint. Then it came around to the land based minerals industry and a firestorm of hellish proportions irrupted. The most absurd criticism was that it didn't actually produce any revenue. By definition these things don't produce revenue during the investment phase. They are designed to do this. Well Duh.
Resource rent taxes are in fact an idea dreamed up by miners for miners in the interests of miners. The minute anyone mentions a full blown sovereign wealth fund which would have the benefits we actually need the miners drag out the resource rent tax and say 'no, no. Look over here. Don't look over there. Here good. There bad. here are all the reasons why.'
And we all just keep going around in circles. getting nowhere at a tremendous speed.
Saturday 28 March 2015
Friday 13 March 2015
It Reeks of Ideology aka "against stupidity..."
Alan Kohler
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
Michael Janda
Greg Jericho
Here we are in 2015, staring down the barrel of another joke of an LNP budget. The worst aspects of the robbing hood's first budget were thankfully blocked in the Senate by the forces of the far right, of all people, now clothed in the guise of the progressive. In other words we are now progressing in a regressive manner towards a vague right wing phantasm of an ideological utopia defining our reality in terms of a sepia-soaked image of life reminiscent of a time 60-70 years ago.
I began this entry in the usual format butt now I am simply going to VENT, so those of you with an aversion to brown matter everywhere would be best advised to turn off your devices now.
How can anyone be so stupid, say such stupid things, look so stupid on TV, treat everyone with patronizing belittling contempt, and yet actually be elected???????? Does the electorate despise itself this much?????? That it could elect a party that openly believes it is incapable of understanding the concept of anything????
I was stung out of my apathy by the prospect of being forced to live under Work Choices; a policy so unfair unjust and so biased towards the interests of SME's that the prospect of being forced to live by it's rules was anathematically intolerable. So I became as active as I could in the Keven07 campaign. I attended meetings, chanted slogans and publicized the message under the constraint of time devoted to earning a living.
And so was the joyous facade of the Rudd government initiated.
How quickly it all unraveled. No one can know what exactly happened. Everything unravelled at Copenhagen.When PM Rudd realised that although anthropomorphic climate change was the existential, defining, issue of the new millennium, but that, due to the power and influence of vested interest groups, whose very existence depended on the defense of the status quo, it would not be recognised as such and acted upon, he sort of lost interest and backed away to lick his wounds and re-energise for the next battle.
This sence of utter disillusionment with reality has been experienced by most of us on the left of politics. It's like "abandon all hope ye who enter here", except instead of the gates of hell we stand at the gates of the planet. The reality of climate change deniers has no basis in reality. To say, therefore, that it is unreal, is an understatement of the first magnitude. But let us return to Kevin'07.
It is to the infinite degradation of the forces of light that Kevin Rudd was not strong enough, indeed was too weak, to ignore or overcome his disillusionment and disappointment with the Copenhagen result and push through his climate change policy regardless of his feelings. All the unfortunate stupidity which directly produced the present incompetent government of Friar Tuck and the Robbing Hood, with its shirtfronting approach to policy, can be traced back to this time. The Rudd Government's abandonment of its principles on climate change, after all its rhetoric on the subject, forced the electorate to reconsider its position, leading to a slump in the polls, which allowed the centrifugal forces within the federal ALP to expose the long knives.
Leaders live and die by their principles. If a leader is to lead in an efficient manner he or she must ponder the morality and ethics of their stance. Only then can they decide what policies lead in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction. Correct or incorrect doesn't really matter. Only the vision of the leader can enlighten the path we all choose.
Most people believed in Rudd's original stance on climate change and the resultant need for his policies. When he turned around and stabbed them in the back by winding these policies back, he set forces in motion which lead him to be dispatched in the same way. Now to return full circle in this piece, let us again contemplate stupidity.
Three links occur at the beginning. These and their content are only a smattering of what is out there, freely available to anyone who may care to look. They refute and contradict in a coldly analytical, rational, evidence-based manner, every policy, argument, direction and principle of this illegitimate farce of a government. Yet the electorate is not boiling with civil disobedience, wrath and unrest, but continues to tacitly and openly legitimise this grave state of affairs.
Now that is stupid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)