People don't work to pay taxes. People work to get what they can after tax. They'll change where they earn their income. They'll change how they earn their income. They'll change how much they earn, when they receive the income. They'll change all of those things to minimize taxes.
Arthur Laffer, author of the eponymous Laffer Curve.
The doctrine of environmentalism is a new form of conservatism, which deploys the politics of fear to control or at least sway how people behave. What’s really happened is that the practical problem of pollution has been moralised – super-moralised, in fact. What should be treated as a specific problem in need of a few solutions – whether that be going nuclear, investigating renewables or reshaping our climate – is instead turned into a new organising principle of politics and morality.
Environmentalism, far from encouraging us to transcend the everyday, tells us to rummage around in our dustbins or to tot up how much carbon we used while driving to the shops; it implores us to obsess over everyday shit and nonsense. And it offers no redemption whatsoever, no promise of a better life in return for recycling our rubbish and never flying abroad. Instead, you live, you pollute, you try to pollute less, and then you die. And when you die, you carry on polluting, according to the misanthropes, through the toxins you emit while being cremated or buried in the earth.
According to ZDNet, hackers are getting ready to attack more anti-piracy bodies. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft has reportedly been hit and users of 4chan and Internet Relay Chat are apparently nominating new victims for DDoS attacks as part of the ‘Operation Payback' campaign.I'm going to quit for today. What with the Royal Society recanting from the true Climate Catastrophist faith and now this, I am blinded by tears of joy.
It seems to me that all we voters have to choose between is two brands of fantasy. Ed Miliband's fantasy is that Labour can now do all the stuff it was voted in to do in 1997, when it achieved an awesome mandate at the start of a long boom. David Cameron's fantasy, shared by his deputy, is that he can wipe out the deficit within five years, to the applause of a busy, purposeful and grateful nation.And, with reference to the Coalition government's decision to cancel - probably on the grounds that anything he did was assumed to be corrupt - Peter Mandelson's £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters (which relates directly to yesterday's post on the prospects for nuclear energy in Britain):
Britain's nuclear energy programme may not be exactly healthy (no government subsidy for nuclear development was the Old Generation's policy, under Old Generation energy secretary Ed Miliband). But Forgemasters has an eye to the foreign markets it believes will be buying the large castings that only one other company in the world presently supplies for nuclear power stations.Deborah Orr is married to the novelist and acerb commentator Will Self. I imagine they breakfast apart, as their combined reactions to the day's news would probably achieve critical mass.
The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty. . . . It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future. There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.Wow. The bubble really has burst. People who should have known better are at last admitting that the emperor is bollock naked. Having watched Al Gore's bandwagon gather momentum for twenty years in defiance of - indeed with active hostility towards - all norms of proper scientific inquiry, I'm having difficulty adjusting to the fact that the tide has turned at last.
The fact that I was born into privilege has little to do with it, for thanks to Castro and company I ended up at the very bottom of American society, a penniless orphan and a "spic" who was constantly reminded by teachers and counselors that his proper place in the world was at the bottom. So, I've been there, with the poorest, living in the same slums, facing all of the discrimination and obstacles that those at the very bottom must surpass. And no one helped me out of the pit. I climbed out because I was lucky enough to live in a free society where effort and accomplishment are not punished, but naturally rewarded. I know poverty, and have lived much longer as a poor man than as a child of privilege.
But I don't think that creating a murderous dictatorship that enforces the redistribution of goods is the solution to poverty.
The three so-called benefits that you think were provided to the Cuban people by Castro and company are illusory. First of all, Cuba had plenty of education, culture, and medical care before Castro came along. In 1958, Cuba had a literacy rate of nearly 80%, a lower infant mortality rate than many European countries, a vibrant mix of European and African culture (which gave the world the rumba, mambo, and cha-cha-cha, along with Jose Raul Capablanca, a world chess champion), more television sets and more newspapers per capita than Italy, and attracted over one million European immigrants, and so on... I could send you a long list of items that prove that Cuba was no third world country before it became Castrolandia.But as he says:
Anyway... what about these so-called achievements of Castrolandia? What is the use of educating people if you restrict freedom of expression and communication? What is the use of health care if you deprive people of autonomy and bar them from all of the privileges enjoyed by tourists to their country? Slave owners provide health care for their slaves, after all, because they are investments. And they educate them too, so they can perform their assigned tasks.
I know I can't change the way you think. I am now old enough [me too, Don Carlos!] to realize that it is very hard to convert anyone who is committed to their faith. And it seems to me that you exhibit all the signs of a pious enthusiast, for anyone who thinks that the so-called Cuban revolution is a good thing is indeed a religious zealot, for seeing the destruction of Cuba and the enslavement of its people as a good thing takes commitment to a very specific ideology, that of the prophets Marx and Lenin.Hat-tip to Charles Santos-Buch
In all the publicity given to the opening of "the world's largest wind farm" off the Kent coast last week, by far the most important and shocking aspect of this vast project was completely overlooked. Over the coming years we will be giving the wind farm's Swedish owners a total of £1.2 billion in subsidies. That same sum, invested now in a single nuclear power station, could yield a staggering 13 times more electricity, with much greater reliability.There's just two teensy problems: the first is that the Coalition government has no way back from its commitment to "green energy". Cameron and his millionaire chum Zac Goldsmith burned the Conservative party's bridges with the 2007 publication of the Quality of Life Policy Groups' Blueprint for a Green Economy.
In the "Pledge to America" they unveiled last week, House Republicans promise they will "launch a sustained effort to stem the relentless growth in government that has occurred over the past decade." Who better for the job than the folks who ran the government for most of that time? If the GOP's record of fiscal fecklessness were not enough reason to doubt its newfound commitment to curbing "Washington’s irresponsible spending habits," the pledge's failure to address entitlement and defense programs would be.Quite. They are all mendacious scum - but at least in the States that view is being loudly expressed by a significant part of the electorate.
What keeps most non-leftist Democrats voting Democrat has been the spectacularly effective saturation of virtually all media and all educational institutions with the message that the Right is mean-spirited and dangerous. People are fed the message “Danger on the Right” - and virtually never “Danger on the Left,” despite the Left’s far bloodier record.Indeed - do our kids get taught about the enslavement of whole peoples and the genocides of those acting in the name of socialism? Not a chance - all they get taught is the African slave trade and the Nazis.
That is why nearly all leftist reactions to conservatives are to avoid argument and smear them as sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, or bigoted. It is almost impossible to come up with the name of a leading conservative whom the dominant media have not dismissed as one or more of these, and usually as a buffoon as well. In effect, the left says, and has been saying for 100 years, “You may not agree with us, but our opponents are evil.”The rest is more particularly applicable to the US experience, but his comment on blacks voting Democrat apply, mutatis mutandis, to the sad city and northern voters in the UK who vote tribally for a party that has spat in their faces: the leftists have ruined the cities they govern, and ruined the public schools they control, yet still their victims vote for them because they think they have no choice.
With the spending review edging ever closer, Britain's unions are preparing to take advantage of the public's discontent. They have spent the past few decades on the back foot, while the population often never had it so good. So now that austerity measures are set to bite, do these organisations have the mandate to fight back?
The firm's actions have been highlighted by the BBC and Which? has referred the firm to disciplinary tribunal. The website was taken down by a 4chan DDoS attack, while the firm's owner , Andrew Crossley received prank calls in the middle of the night earlier this week, according to TorrentFreak.Some seriously embarassing stuff is promised. One of the hackers commented "Payback is a bitch, isn't it Andrew?"
A derogatory reference to a person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake, who is also deficient in most other human attributes so as to impair the person's smooth operation within society.
After it ditched everything it once claimed to believe in, launched three disastrous wars, obliterated key freedoms, and went from viewing the working classes as potential voters to branding them a dumb, unhealthy blob in need of constant policing, you might think there is nothing left to admire in the Labour Party. But there is one thing. Its powers of self-delusion. These are so strong, so unshakeable, that they cannot help but inspire a kind of bizarre, wide-eyed awe in anyone who beholds them. And they have been on full display following the election of Ed Miliband as the new Labour leader.
The real issue is that, when it comes to the Tea Party, liberals have two big blind spots that render them unable to understand what’s going on. The first is that they fail to appreciate the depth of popular alienation from the political establishment. Voters are generally disenchanted with politicians across both parties. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that congressional Democrats’ approval rating was at 30 per cent, and congressional Republicans’ approval was even lower, at 20 per cent. A separate survey by Gallup found that approval rating for all of Congress is at an all-time low of 18 per cent (down from a peak of 39 per cent shortly following Obama’s entry into the White House).DOWN from a PEAK of 39 percent?
The second liberal weakness is that they cannot resist spending their energies being preoccupied with the Tea Party. They see the partiers’ rise as an independent phenomenon, but it is as much their own creation, especially by those in the media. Before the Tea Party represented much of anything, liberals drew attention to it, and warned of the dangerous consequences if it got close to power. It could have been dismissed as an irrelevant fringe movement and a sign of weakness within the Republican Party (given that it arose outside of the party’s structure). They also crowned Sarah Palin queen of the Tea Party, even though many if not most Tea Party activists reject her politics, especially her socially conservative views. In the event, liberals’ fear of the Tea Party’s rise has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: shining the spotlight has given this ‘party’ the aura of being something new, different and willing to have a go at change.Amen to that. However, the fact is that the US leftists have defined themselves in contemptuous opposition to a genuinely grass-roots movement that commands the sort of widespread support that they have never enjoyed, and are feeling as personally isolated as, objectively, they always have been ideologically.
And the three bears . . .Miliband is Labour leader because four big unions, predominantly composed of public sector workers, organised strenuously for him and because, in the process, they put enough pressure on a few undecided MPs to carry the day. Labour will undoubtedly unite behind Mr Miliband now, as they should. But the new leader must make clear that he will give no special favours to the unions . . . . If Labour is to become again a party of government it has to be the party for public sector workers without being the party of them.
Voters talk of the need to 'make do and mend' public services, of living within their means. There is little to no recognition that growth, jobs and homes could be placed in jeopardy. The coalition looks competent, and, importantly, mainstream. This may sound bad for the new Labour leader, but it is in fact much worse.Wow; and it gets better. Muir says Labour failed to hold on to a particular group of voters in the Midlands and south-east of England, described by market research as 'happy families', who constitute 40 percent of the population in key marginals such as Milton Keynes and who are the most positive about the Coalition.
These families live in new-build housing, many have young children, a household annual income of £20,000 to £30,000, and are cash and time poor. They depend heavily on their car and really feel the pinch when petrol prices rise. They are utterly demanding for their children and want the very best in terms of service provision.As I said - gob-smacked. How could someone that honest ever have worked closely with Gordon Brown?
Four centuries ago, the great [Islamic] Mughal emperor Akbar was legislating for religious freedom and equality in what is now India [actually conquered northern India, but what the hell], while in parts of Europe heretics were being burned at the stake [there goes the Roman Catholic vote].Actually, Akbar ruled with much the same indifference to local cults as the British were to do later, although the insensitive British imperialists hanged offenders instead of getting war elephants to step on their heads, and offended against multiculturalism by abolishing suttee and thuggee.
The United Kingdom will also show leadership by example. As fierce advocates of the international rule of law, we will practice what we preach. No nation can insist on the law, and then act as though it is above it.Nice one. Leadership implies that someone may follow, an optimistic view of Britain's current world status. Plus declaring that Britain acted illegally in joining the Iraq invasion, although consistent with LibDem orthodoxy, is not Coalition policy - the Tories, after all, supported the invasion - and admits a legal liability that the Iraqis, who bear Britain a grudge for surrendering Basra to Shia extremists, may choose to exploit.
In recent years we have learned – in some cases the hard way – that democracy cannot be created by diktat. Freedom cannot be commanded into existence.Let's see now: Italy, Germany, Japan are the more screamingly obvious exceptions to Clegg's newly-discovered principle of political science. And what about all those wars of national liberation? Finally, who in his right mind would argue that democracy creates freedom? Unless the rule of the majority is circumscribed by fundamental laws that the majority cannot change - which is not the case in Britain - freedom is an extremely fragile flower that may be trampled at will.
Social democracy, as we have come to understand it, has become unaffordable. . . By “social democracy” I mean the doctrine that a contented society is not merely a rich society, but that public purpose is as important as private profit and that the government has a duty to pass laws, levy taxes and provide money and services to protect people from the insecurities and depredations inherent in a market economy. . . Unlike liberalism, social democracy believes that a strong state is needed to make life better for everyone, and that liberty and localism alone will not lead us to utopia. Unlike conventional socialism, it asserts that a properly functioning market economy is the best way to generate the money needed to finance our social ambitions.
National income is almost four times higher than in 1953-54. So we could afford to quadruple health, education and welfare spending without these services adding to the tax burden as a percentage of GDP. But spending has risen faster than that, so the burden has increased, from 11 per cent of GDP in 1953-54 to 28 per cent this year. And it is worth noting that, whatever we like to think about the Thatcher/Major years, “social democracy spending” grew by 75 per cent in real terms between 1979 and 1997, and rose from 20 per cent of GDP to 23 per cent.Kellner asks, "How can social democracy continue to fight for the collective good, for social justice and for a view of human well-being that includes but goes beyond material wealth, in an era in which the spending train has hit the buffers?" He has six proposals:
Making drama is the best job in the world – the privilege of working with writers with a unique vision, the spine-tingling spirit of camaraderie between a production team, the privilege of broadcasting into the nation's front-rooms. What could be better than that?He's still there.
But what I love about it the most is how passionate the people who work in drama are. Working in TV drama isn't a nine-to-five job, it is a wonderful, all-consuming lifestyle. It gobbles up everything. It is glorious.
And with passion comes debate, discussion, tension, disagreement. If we didn't all think differently, have different ideas of what works and what doesn't, wouldn't our lives, and more importantly, our TV screens be less interesting? We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.
Would Those Who Know Better also like us to require a licence before we are allowed to share sperm in the traditional way? Perhaps we shouldn’t give them ideas – their answer to that question would almost certainly be ‘yes’.Who's really scaring the girls? slams a recent publication Because I Am A Girl by Plan UK for grossly overstating the specific risk to girls in Britain's cities, relating it to the fact that "no crime is too tragic, no trend too exaggerated, for a politician not to take the opportunity to posture as our protector, our guardian."
Many uber-capitalists would tend to agree with Vince Cable's critique of capitalism - that it tends towards short-termism, that markets often don't work in a fair and efficient way, that vast rewards often accrue to the undeserving.Thus Robert Peston, the Bitchy Boys' business editor. That's über, pronounced you-ber, by the way. Peston's verson sounds like udder-capitalists, which, come to think of it, may be an unwittingly accurate description of the sort of people he is talking about, who love a heavily regulated market because it raises the cost of entry and permits them to buy from politicians the advantage their products cannot win in the marketplace.
Every government since the fall of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan some two decades ago has - by stealthy increments - tried to make it their business to try and harness capitalism to minimise the bads and maximise the goods that it generates. The problem is, some would say, that they did this in a piecemeal way that didn't get to the heart of the matter.Nearly all governments subsequent to Thatcher and Reagan, all over the world, continued the process of deregulation because it created greater prosperity.
Acknowledged experts - including the governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the Financial Services Authority - assert that the banking crisis of 2008 is a demonstration that the taming of capitalism has failed in a pretty fundamental way.That would be the "acknowledged experts" who, possessing all the necessary power to restrain asset price inflation and the uncontrolled speculation based on it, did not do so.
Mayor Adrian Fenty, under whom the murder rate has gone down and the school children's test scores have gone up, was resoundingly defeated for re-election. He was not simply a passive beneficiary of rising test scores and falling murder rates. He appointed Michelle Rhee as head of the school system and backed her as she fought the teachers' union and fired large numbers of ineffective teachers - something considered impossible in most cities across the country. Mayor Fenty also appointed the city's chief of police, Cathy Lanier, who has cracked down on hoodlumism, as well as crime.
Either one of these achievements would made mayors local heroes in most other cities. Why then was he clobbered in the election?
One key fact tells much of the story: Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote. Both men are black. But the head of the school system that he appointed is Asian and the chief of police is a white woman. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black. There were also bitter complaints that black contractors did not get as many of the contracts for doing business with the city as they expected.
In short, the mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently expected to do. He also didn't spend as much time schmoozing with the folks as was expected.
How did we reach the point where black voters put racial patronage and racial symbolism above the education of their children and the safety of everyone?This is precisely the trend accentuated by The One's core supporters, and what the "multiculturalism" pushed by the Labour pukes and their bought and paid for media allies have tried to recreate in Britain.
There are many reasons but one key factor was the creation, back in the 1960s, of a whole government-supported industry of race hustling. President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty" bankrolled all kinds of local "leaders" and organizations with the taxpayers' money, in the name of community "participation" in shaping the policies of government. These "leaders" and community activists have had every reason to hype racial resentments and to make issues "us" against "them."
One of the largely untold stories of our time has been the story of how ACORN, Jesse Jackson and other community activists have been able to transfer billions of dollars from banks to their own organizations' causes, with the aid of the federal government, exemplified by the Community Reinvestment Act and its sequels. Racial anger and racial resentments are the fuel that keeps this lucrative racket going.
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.Forty-two years ago a new "shake and bake" subaltern leading a platoon of conscripts massacred hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The Army tried to cover it up, but when it was finally investigated the thing that emerged most clearly was that the soldiers did not regard the "gooks" as human beings.
Having received a number of serious allegations concerning both the eligibility of participating voters and the conduct of Lutfur Rahman, the NEC has decided to investigate the allegations made. As a result, administrative action has been taken to remove Lutfur Rahman as a candidate pending the investigation. Nominations for Tower Hamlets mayor close this week and in the circumstances the NEC had no option but to impose another candidate. The NEC has voted to select Helal Abbas Uddin as Labour's candidate.Abbas Uddin was always the NEC's favourite son, but they were prepared to put up with Lutfur rather than open the can of worms about how Labour keeps itself in power in all its rotten boroughs.
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