Eliot Spitzer - Client Nine

"I think he would like to become President. Yes, it's in his nature."

Mr. Spitzer Senior on son, Eliot -  Harvard Law Student, anti-business crusader, Attorney General of New York, Governor of New York, FAP (Future American President) and err, Client Nine.

It is somewhat ironic that his downfall will be caused by something as trivial as visiting call girls (though obviously not trivial to poor Mrs. Spitzer) after the carnage he has caused to American business.

A fascinating examination of Spitzer's record can be found here. It's a long piece but well worth the read.

"What's truly stunning is [Spitzer's] ability to force reform—to root out institutionalized sleaziness with lightning speed. . . . Congress and federal regulatory agencies such as the SEC take years, if they're lucky, to shape an industry or reshape its basic practices. . . . Yet Spitzer, an elected official from a single state, has turned entire industries upside down."

Fortune magazine

Here's how

"In order to enforce his morality, Spitzer frequently uses an old law that allows him to criminalize behavior not obviously illegal and, by threatening business executives with prison and economic ruination, mandate such reforms as may spring from his moral sense. The law that Spitzer has employed for this purpose is New York's 1921 Martin Act. It empowers [New York's attorney general] to subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state; to keep an investigation totally secret or to make it totally public; and to choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants. People called in for question during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. . . . Now for the scary part: To win a case, the AG doesn't have to prove that the defendant intended to defraud anyone, that a transaction took place, or that anyone actually was defrauded at Spitzer has employed for these purposes is New York's 1921 Martin Act."

By using this intrusive Act, Spitzer has been able to go after and beat the Wall Street Research industry (targetting Merrill in particular), the Insurance industry (targetting Marsh) and finally, the Mutual Fund industry. On the back of these mighty scalps and his 'champion of the people' approach, he was voted Governor of New York in January 2007.

This is how he and his team work, 

1. Denounce the realities of business, especially the pursuit of economic self-interest, as ethically sordid—in this case, denounce the reality that hustle and hype are the Brownian motion of commerce, from the rug merchants of the Middle East to the stockbrokers of Wall Street.

2. Universal Fiduciality. Ignore the rule of "caveat emptor" and the responsibility of market participants to look out for themselves. In the name of equality, insist that business leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to all their customers, investors, workers—indeed, to the public at large.

3. The Bloody Shirt. Find a handful of acts that cross the line into inexcusable (though not necessarily illegal) behavior. In this case, Spitzer found a few e-mails where hype had passed into lying.

4. Extra-legal Punishment.Use these examples of deplorable (though perhaps legal) behavior to publicly smear and threaten an entire company and its top executives, putting it and them under a cloud and driving down the company's market value.

5. Play the Good Cop. Offer a lenient penalty in exchange for the right to dictate corporate policy. 

6. Repeat as Needed. Use the above sequence of steps as often as necessary to restructure an entire industry in conformity with the morality of Eliot Spitzer.

7. A Virtue-cratic Takeover. Make it clear that Eliot Spitzer and his morally superior minions are now in charge. Executives may be allowed to pretend they are running their companies.

A wonderful conclusion to finish ;

"Spitzer's master premise is Jacobinism, the notion that the liberty of human beings must be curbed by government virtue-crats acting in the name of morality. Despite all we have learned from public-choice theory, Spitzer truly believes that power-seekers like himself will create more ethical arrangements than will people who are acting in their own self-interest and who are curbed only by laws against force and fraud. As he asserted last year, since market capitalism is not "perfection itself," government must "put the brakes" on free markets, in order to "maintain a just and equitable society." The historical record of those Robespierres who begin by complaining that the free actions of human beings are not perfect, and who go on to "perfect" them through the coercive instruments of government, is not an encouraging one."

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Disproportionate Response

Yesterday a group of schoolchildren in West Jerusalem were in class making preparations to celebrate the new month on the Jewish calendar when a Palestinian gunmen walked in and opened fire, killing eight and wounding nine. None were older than sixteen.

The Hamas government described the killer as 'heroic'. Said Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, "this heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians.''

The usual suspects (the EU and the UN) will no doubt scream once again with rage at Israel's forthcoming 'disproportionate response' to this latest atrocity. But how does one even begin to negotiate with a government that calls the murder of 15 year-old school kids 'heroic'?

School kids.

Both the statement from the EU and the UN start with "although Israel has the right to self-defence under international law.." and end with "but Israel is also obliged to protect the civilian population of Gaza."  In case you don't speak Suprantionalese, i'll translate into English - 'Israel has no right to respond in any way whatsoever'.  

Also, what would a 'proportionate response' look like?    Does the EU and the UN therefore think it's acceptable for the Israelis to kill eight schoolchildren in retaliation? After all, that would be 'proportionate'. Of course not. We all know that the Israelis don't target civilians but terrorists.  Yes, it is a tragedy that innocent Palestinians get caught up in the cross fire, but this is because Hamas terrorists hide amongst their civilian population firing hundreds of Qasam rockets on a daily basis, deliberately putting their lives in danger. 

Israellycool has the details.

 

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Watermelons

Love the environment? check. 

Always recycle, place litter in bins, turn the lights off?  check

Wanna do your bit for Mother Earth? check

Thought that voting Green might be the answer?    check

Before you do so, you might want to read their policies first.  This is from the British Green Party's Policy page.  

It starts so promisingly. 

 

'We believe in people taking control of their own lives.'

Gotta love that. But here's the rest, 

Economy

'Stop Britain's public services from being forced open to international competition and privatisation.

Measure economic benefits in terms of quality of life, development of people and care for the environment, as well as money in the bank. (Ed - that must be the Happiness Index, where Happiness = Reality/Expectations)

Campaign for a binding legal framework for corporate social responsibility.

Raise the rate of Corporation Tax to 40% (from 30%)

Ban supermarkets from further store openings.

Place restrictions on global free trade

Education

'The Greens believe in education being for the public good, and publicly-funded.'

Transport

'Re-nationalisation of Britain's railways and re-regulation of our buses.'

Peace and Justice

'Poverty and oppression still fuel conflict and nurture extremism. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine still long for real peace.  (Ed - this is a real White Thing - claiming to speak on behalf of other cultures)

Progress is not the inequality that comes from half the world living on less than £1.70 a day.'  (Ed - but hasn't free trade and capitalism just dragged 600 million people out of this trap?)

Home & Community

'Stopping motorways and urban sprawl from disfiguring hills and forests that have inspired generations of musicians, writers, poets and painters.'

Food We Can Trust 

'We want a GM-free Britain.

Farm animals have a right not to suffer. (Ed - does this mean they are against halal meat?)

Banning food imports from poor African countries. 'Caroline Lucas won support from many farmers for highlighting the absurd trade where British food products are flown half way round the world to countries which sell exactly the same type of products back to us.'

Clean Green Energy

'Investing in sources of energy like offshore wind farms, wave and solar power that don't cause global warming.

We call for the return of the fuel-duty escalator, scrapped after the fuel protests, so that petrol and diesel become progressively more expensive year by year.

Real Progress means stopping the nuclear industry.'

Animal Rights

'We want an end to animal experimentation.'

By the People, for the People

'We believe in people taking control of their own lives. But that doesn't mean that the State has no role to play: what is the function of Government if not to regulate the economy in favour of the majority and of the long-term interests of the world we live in?'

What, indeed.

This political party looks a little like this one.

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'Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short'

19 year-old aboriginal, Ashley Brooks, broke into the house of a 75 year-old great-grandmother, stole $60 from her wallet and then proceeded to beat her so severely that she was in a coma for 12 days, writes Andrew Bolt.  Judge David Parsons described Ashley Wayne Brooks' attack on Barbara Durea as sickening. He sentenced him to a two-year youth justice order. Judge Parsons said Brooks was avoiding jail "because of his youth and slight build, he would not fare well in an adult prison." and because Brooks hasn't "had much of a chance to date."

Meanwhile, Queensland judge, Sarah Bradley, (the one who previously called a mentally disabled ten-year old victim of gang rape a 'willing participant') has allowed a white teacher, who sexually abused an 11 year-old Torres Strait boy, time to prepare evidence for his case that he was educating him in 'traditional Islander practices'.

I struggle to remain calm when reading of cases such as these. I have to assume that either

i) Judges Parsons and Bradley hate aboriginals

ii) they view indigenous people as sub-human and hence not responsible for their actions.

Their refusal to punish these appalling crimes will not affect me living in my nice, wealthy suburb of Sydney. But it will condemn women living in indigenous communities to a life of rape, violence and early death. 

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McCain; The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

With Guiliani out of the Presidential race, the choice now comes down to Obama, Hilary, Romney, Huckabee, Paul or McCain. For classical liberals, this is no easy decision. Ron Paul should be the obvious candidate but his history is too murky too ignore, his character questionable and his merry band of supporters too kooky to brush aside.

Michael Tanner at Cato has an interesting post about John McCain. Now that he is the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination, it is worth taking a closer look at the man.
Tanner makes the following points (my summary).

The Good:
1. He is a true fiscal conservative. He is well known as an opponent of earmarks and pork barrel spending and an advocate of entitlement reform. He was early an ardent support of personal accounts for Social Security, and has pushed for serious Medicare reform, including means-testing. Almost alone among Republicans, he opposed the disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit.

2. He has offered the best health care reform plan of any of the candidates.

3. During his time in the Senate, he has never voted for a tax increase. While he has taken much heat for voting against the Bush tax cuts, he now calls for making those tax cuts permanent.

4. He is a strong and unapologetic free trader.

The Bad:
1. John McCain frequently makes Dr. Strangelove look like a peacenik. He’s a true believer in the neoconservative goal of remaking the world to fit our desires and beliefs. At best on foreign policy he would be a competent Bush. At worst, he appears a recipe for perpetual conflict.

2. On domestic policy, he has shown a disturbing predilection for elevating every personal pet peeve, from steroids in baseball to airplane service quality, to a federal issue. And, he has embraced heavily regulatory environmental policies and compulsory national service.

3. He tends to support federal power over federalism, executive authority over legislative, and generally leans toward the imperial presidency.

The Ugly:
1. John McCain appears to have little more than contempt for the First Amendment and free speech generally. He is the principal author of a campaign finance bill that severely restricts political speech. Not content with those restrictions on political speech, he has continually sought to expand regulation to other groups. He has said that he “would rather have a clean government than one where "First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”

2. Most worrisome of all appears to be McCain’s basic philosophy, which is unapologetically statist, as Matt Welch points out in his new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. McCain once said “each and every one of us has a duty to serve a cause greater than our own self-interest.” McCain believes that cause to be the good of the collective, often defined as the nation or the national community.

I feel Tanner is harsh on McCain. For instance, it is inconcsistent to call a man who has never voted for a tax increase, who is an avid free-trader, who believes in school vouchers and who has a dislike of government spending as statist.

The charge of his aggressive foreign policy is more accurate but many would argue that the libertarian movement's Achilles Heel is its refusal to defend liberty. His campaign finance bill may be misguided but he is attempting to address an area of US democracy that is broke. To say that he has contempt for free speech is ridiculous.

In addition, he is doesn't pander to the awful Christian Right. He voted in favour of amnesty towards illegals and is generally pro-immigration. I don't like his pro-life stance but he has gone on record as saying that he would not repeal Roe vs Wade, so you wander about the depth of his pro-life convictions.

But more than his policies alone, I cannot but help admiring this man. His conduct and bravery during the Vietnam War and his courage in supporting the surge in Iraq last year when at the time it looked like electoral suicide, points to a man of principle, of honour and of conviction. Though he misguidedly supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, he was the first to call for Rumsfeld's sacking and has been an ardent opponent of torture.

American liberals have to vote for someone. I would vote McCain.

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Big Government Is Bad For Your Wallet

'Big government is bad for economic growth.'

No shit, Sherlock, i hear you cry.

But this isn't my view, nor one of a neo-liberal free market think tank.

It's from that respected institution and dogged inflation-fighter, the European Central Bank, which has come to this conclusion all by itself. It is papers like this that will help spread the gospel.

The paper concludes that each additional 1% of government spending reduces growth by 0.13%.

One interesting finding. The taxes that have the least harmful effects on growth are income taxes. Those that hinder growth the most are consumption taxes and government subsidies.

Something to chew on.

via UK libertarian and freakonomics-style blogger, Chris Dillow.

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Creative Capitalism

I admire Bill Gates. He has built a huge company from scratch and in so doing has produced hundreds of thousands of jobs and paid a fortune in taxes. He has been instrumental in driving down the cost of computing (and don't tell me that Microsoft is an evil monopoly - every company aspires to be a monopoly) so that almost anyone can have broadband access to the internet. Also, unlike many arch-capitalists, he is clearly concerned with bettering the lot of the world's poor.

So it was with great disappointment that i read his speech last week to the World Economic Forum assembled at Davos (in my previous life as an Emerging Markets bond trader, i've been to one of these and they are the ultimate taxpayer-funded boondoggle), outlining his vision for 'creative capitalism'.

“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well. I like to call this idea creative capitalism."

He gave an interview to the WSJ expanding his thoughts in further detail,

Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid, the part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion." Among the fixes he plans to call for: Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. "Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don't fully benefit from market forces," he plans to say. With today's speech, Mr. Gates adds his high-profile name to the ranks of those who argue that unfettered capitalism can't solve broad social problems. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work providing small loans to the poor, is traversing the U.S. this month promoting a new book that calls capitalism "half developed" because it focuses only on the profit-oriented side of human nature, not on the satisfaction derived from helping others.

That such an intelligent man can utter such drivel is surprising and sad. He is hugely influential and many free-market agnostics will read his words and conclude that capitalism is a rich man's plaything. They would be so wrong.

What is needed is not 'creative' capitalism but 'more' capitalism. The Soweto slums he identifies are poor because the free market is not being allowed to work. China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Eastern Europe to name but a few have pulled hundreds of millions of people off the bread line simply by abandoning socialism and embracing capitalism.

Additionally, a paper published by William Nordhaus in 2004 showed that only a 'miniscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers'.

Writing for the Globalisation Institute, Tim Worstall remarks that although Gates cites Adam Smith's, 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' as one of the great influences of his vision, he would do well to remember this passage from the follow up to that book, 'Wealth of Nations',

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from a regard to their interest."

A great man but with little vision.

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SocGen Boss Speaks Out

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Culture War

Geert Wilders - Boris Johnson's uglier brother?

The greatest worry for all parents of schoolchildren is bullying. The government agrees and hence all schools must have an anti-bullying policy. All parents know that the worst course of action is to appease bullies. Yet this is precisely what European governments are doing to the Islamic bullies in their communities. For instance,

1. Jacqui Smith, the UK Home Secretary, has declared in truly Orwellian style that all future Islamic terror atrocities will be referred to as 'un-Islamic'. Quite why she seeks to speak on behalf of her Muslim constituents is beyond me. Or quite how she would know is also a mystery. Still, there you have it. Islamic terrorist attacks are now to be known as 'un-Islamic criminal acts'. Terrorists have been defeated by Labour as they have been re-branded criminals. And Ignorance is Truth. It's like calling the Spanish Inquisition 'un-Catholic'.

A survey for Policy Exchange revealed that 1 in 8 young British Muslims support terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and 1in 3 believes that apostates (Muslims who leave their faith) should be killed. So yes - it's not a majority, but it's not exactly a trifling minority either.

2. Next up is the case of Hani Ramadan, a schoolteacher in Geneva. He wrote an article in French newspaper, Le Monde, stating that adulterers should be stoned. He was sacked. However, a Court of Appeals has just reinstated him and awarded him two years pay in damages.

3. And then there's the Dutch. Looking at Holland and its Muslim population is akin to peering ten years into the future for England (and possibly a generation for Australia). Tensions are already elevated in Holland following the murder of Theo van Gogh three years ago by a Muslim extremist for dissing the Koran.

Enter stage left Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party and not a man known for his ability to smooth troubled waters. Geert has made a film about the Koran. No surprises for guessing that it doesn't exactly portray Mohammed and the Koran in a positive light. In fact, Geert himself stated that his film will show the Koran as a "source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror". Right on queue and without a trace of irony, the Grand Mufti of Syria has indicated that Geert will be 'responsible for inciting wars and bloodshed'.

Nothing surprising so far. Just another example of Europe's big, big problem. But here comes the shocker from Dutch Foreign Minister, Maxime Verhagenstated,

"Freedom of expression doesn't mean the right to offend"

Chew on that oh-lovers-of-liberty and start preparing your kids for a real culture war.

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Cricket Shambles

Ten observations on the cricket fiasco from a cricket-loving pommy.

i) Peter Roebuck is an unmitigated, pretentious twat and an embarrassment to my country.

ii) That 70% of SMH readers agree with him is an embarrassment to your country.

iii) The Australian cricket team is one of the world’s outstanding sports teams, if not the best.

iv) Australia play thrilling cricket (contrast the 376 runs scored on Day One with the torturous approach to batting adopted by the Indians) and have done more to pull the crowds back into Test Cricket than any other team.

v) Ricky Ponting is already one of the most successful Test captains of all time. 16 victories on the trot is not shabby.

vi) As a four-time tourist with the Barmy Army (lost all four series), i can safely ascert that every single last fan of this traveling band would give their right eye to see Freddie and Vaughny celebrate with impunity and grind our opponents into the dust if we could replicate a fraction of Punter’s success.

vii) We live in a world of hyper-sensitivity towards race. The captains were given strict prior instructions by the match referee to report any incidents of racial abuse. Ponting had no choice but to report the ‘monkey’ comment. He would have been slaughtered had he urged Symonds not to make a meal out of it. The Test has exposed the stupidity of this sensitivity towards racist remarks. Is it worse to call someone a ‘monkey’ than his mother a ‘whore’?

viii) Sledging is a part of the game. It’s not pleasant nor sporting and the Aussies are the worst. But now talk is of ‘banning sledging’ - the knee-jerk cry of the nanny-state. During Barmy Army tours, we sang this of Shane Warne, hoping it might piss him off and affect his game,

(to the tune of ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ - an old English working class favourite)

Shane Warne is a druggie
He should be in rehab
He took his mummy’s little pill
To try and lose the flab

He took it to lose some weight
From all the pies and beer,
But when the ICC found out
They banned him for a year

It didn’t work. Should the Barmy Army be pre-emptively banned? Is this discriminatory towards fat people or towards druggies?

ix) You never blame the umpire/referee if decisions don’t go your way. This leads to football. Umpiring a game of cricket is impossible, especially with wonderful TV technology to expose your mistakes. Surely all contentious decisions will now have to be referred to the third umpire. Far from holding up the game (which is the current reason the technology is not more widely used), they add to the tension.

x) Given the surprising support for Roebuck’s call to have Ponting sacked, i can only assume that Australians are becoming queasy about winning. Especially against non-white nations. This is not good for your long term sporting outlook.

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Which Candidate Are You Closest To?

Rudy, Hilary, Obama, McCain etc etc. They all sound good but what do they actually believe in.

Take the test to find out which candidate most closely mirrors your views.

I am closest to Ron Paul and rather strangely furthest from Fred Thompson.

via Iain Dale.

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Why You Should Support The LDP

Comments on the recent LDP posts here have descended into pitched battles on the pros and cons of legalising drugs. This is not a core issue for the party. Unlike the ideological purity of blogging, politics is about compromise. The more votes you target the more conventional your views must be. No-one will like all of the LDP's policies (i certainly don't). However, does anyone here like everything Howard or Rudd or The Greens have to say?

I joined the LDP earlier this year because i was attracted to its two principle messages. If you agree with these two points, then go out and vote for the LDP next month.

1. You are better able to decide how to run your life than the government.
There has been a concerning shift in the attitude of both the major parties in recent times from advising its citizens to ordering them around. Yesterday John Howard referred to the 1 in 4 Australians who enjoy a smoke as 'pariahs'. My local council in Manly wants to ban smokers from lighting up outdoors.

The role of government is to advise its people of the potential harm of certain activities when the science is proven. For instance smoking, skiing, super-sizing your diet, scuba diving and drinking alcohol are all potential killers. They are all also legal activities. Labeling cereals as high in sugar or sticking warning messages on a pack of ciggies is fine. Ordering people not to smoke or to eat junk food is not. The LDP believes that people make better decisions about how to live their lives than the government. It also believes that once you start treating adults like children, they will start behaving like children.

The flipside of greater choice is more responsibility. If you go skiing, or take part in the Sydney-Hobarth yacht race, you are advised to take out insurance. If you, like me, are rather partial to a flame-grilled Whopper, then skip desert. Or exercise. If you want to mix beer and ecstasy, don't go surfing at Bondi or swim with crocodiles after 'half a slab'.

Contrary to a report yesterday that 'individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity', the LDP believes that individuals must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions.

As left-wing UK blogger Chris Dillow writes yesterday,

'It's obvious that the collectivization of responsibility leads to statism, to the view that we should all be treated as children. But the really nasty thing here - which should worry the left as much as right libertarians - is that it disempowers individuals. It's a cliche that, if something is owned by everyone it is in effect owned by none. And this is true of actions as much as anything else. In denying a role for individual responsibility, the statists deny the possibility that "ordinary" people are capable of improving their own lives, and instead invite them to look to their rulers for leadership.'

2. You pay too much tax
The State is a poor planner and manager. Nationalised businesses consistently underperform those in the private sector; micro-managed economies consistently underperform those allowed to develop ad hoc; countries with more economic freedom consistently outperform those with less. The principal roles of government are to enforce our property rights and to protect us from violence. It is not to plan or to manage. We all know what happens to 'Five Year Plans' and 'Great Leaps Forward' .

The LDP believes that the state is too big and that we pay too much tax. Each Australian is on average paying 34% more tax since John Howard came to power - despite an eleven year economic boom! This is a disgraceful and truly unbelievable state of affairs. The recent announcement to hand back $34bn of our money is a step in the right direction and is to be welcomed.

The LDP also believes that the current tax and welfare system does not encourage people to find work, discriminates against the poor and encourages our brightest graduates to seek their fortunes in low tax countries such as Hong Kong (top rate 15%) and Singapore (20%). Our solution is the neat '30/30' policy. You get to keep the first $30,000 of earnings tax-free and pay a flat rate of tax at 30% thereafter. Additionally, welfare is largely replaced by a negative income tax (similar to a Citizen's Basic Income).

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I May Be Some Time

For the usual reasons (life intruding on blogging) i am going to have to take a short break from blogging.

Will still be visiting other blogs and commenting and such like, writing for the Australian Libertarian Society and helping the LDP make some progress in the forthcoming Federal Elections.

Hopefully i won't be too long.

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APEC Rally For Free Trade

In September, Sydney will host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. APEC is an inter-government forum which aims to facilitate economic growth and prosperity, cooperation, trade and investment within the Asia-Pacific region.

A bunch of anti-globalisation and Stop Bush demonstrators plan to march through the city to 'protest against the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The protest will also call for urgent action to stop environmental destruction and for the defence of workers’ rights.'

The LDP will be holding our own demonstration in Martin's Place on Saturday morning in support of free trade. Free trade (not foreign aid) is the only effective means of dragging the world's poor our of poverty. That is why it is vital. The best defence of worker' rights are free trade and a deregulated labour market. Countries with these two policies in place have the lowest unemployment rates and the highest standard of living.

We are no fans of Bush's disastrous policies in Iraq (though Afghanistan is more complex and certainly a more morally valid conflict), but do not share GreenLeft's view that he is 'the world’s leading mass murderer and climate vandal' nor do we 'reject the idea that non-violence is the only tactic that can be used in the battle against oppression.'

A peaceful demonstration is our aim. We are not violent thugs.

The itinery for the day is as follows:-

Saturday 8th September 2007

9:00am - Meet at the corner of York and Market Street on street level above the post office. This is across the intersection from the North-West corner of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB). There will be a short briefing with any last minute updates.

9:20am - Make our way as a group toward Hyde Park.

10:00am - 11:30am - Take our message of freedom to the people.

Please come along and join us if you share these aims.

Update; these are the type of uneducated children who will be chanting school-yard slogans,

'The Liberty and Democracy Party are a bunch of Australian igno-douches halfway between 1st year economics and their first graduate jobs in the p.r./marketing/banking sector. But they’re not all poorly educated assholes.

Some of them are just assholes.

Anyway, the whole globalisation, workplace slavery, environmental degradation, planetary pollution, exponentiation of inequality, stealing land, killing villages, two-party police state bound by economic monotheism thing is going so badly (obviously) that these fans of John Laws think their mighty voices, tiny minds and hunger for media ops are needed at APEC.

So get along and check them out. Take urine.'

Charming.

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Time To Shut Down SBS

Paul Sheehan, writing in the SMH, argues that

'The real question facing the Federal Government, and the overwhelming majority of taxpayers who pay for SBS but rarely watch it, is whether SBS should continue to exist at all.'

(For those outside Australia, the SBS is a state-owned and run free-to-air TV channel roughly equivalent to BBC2). Sheehan continues,

'The Special Broadcasting Service Act should be repealed, the corporation dismantled and sold and its valuable broadcasting spectrum auctioned off. SBS has outlived its charter, and the charter has always been of dubious social utility. (I quote, in part: "As far as practicable, inform, educate and entertain Australians in their preferred languages.")'

'According to SBS projections, during the next five years, the Federal Government will spend almost $1 billion to keep the corporation afloat. And then there's the opportunity costs of the digital spectrum given to SBS by the Howard Government.'

SBS was set up to provide Australians with a multicultural array of TV programs in an era of just two or three stations. Today, by subscribing to Foxtel, one can receive hundreds of such multicultural stations and foreign news 24/7. SBS averages a market share of just 5.4% of network TV viewers. It no longer serves any useful purpose.

The LDP believes that SBS, along with the ABC should be fully privatised.

Governments simply should not be in the business of owning and running TV stations. Their role is to regulate content to ensure standards are met and advertisers' claims are valid. The market is amply served and competition is rife, ensuring a large and diverse selection of TV channels to consumers at a good price.

Like SBS, the ABC has a small national share (now less than 15% of free-to-air channels) but still receives up to $1bn per annum of taxpayers money. This is an anachronistic situation that should be ended.

The money can be better utilised building a Australia's much-needed broadband network or simply handed back to taxpayers to spend on a Foxtel subscription if that is what they want.

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Time To Devalue Faith

Comedian Pat Condell on the growing menace of religious, especially Islamic, intolerance.

'Cultural sensitivity be damned. Some things are more important. Peaceful protest and free speech are not negotiable. Anyone who's offended by that, should damn well stay offended. Personal faith should stay personal.'

via Pub Philosopher

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Friday Funny

click to enlarge
h/t Jonz

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Where Does Your University Rank?

The new 2007 Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings are out.

• Harvard tops again (miles ahead of its nearest competitor)
  
• 17 of the Top 20 are American, 2 are English (Cambridge and Oxford) and 1 is Japanese
• 39 of the Top 50 are American
• The highest placed Aussie Unis are the Australian National University (57) and the Univ of Melbourne (79)

The criteria are

• Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
• Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
• Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories
• Articles published in Nature and Science
• Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index
• Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution

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Socialism Guarantees Income Inequality

Isn't income equality the primary goal of socialists?

Well, in that case, why does Freedom (free trade, capitalism, deregulated markets)....


...correlate so perfectly with Social and Income Equality?


Dark green - most equal societies
Light green
Olive
Orange
Pink
Red
Dark red - most unequal societies

So, if socialism guarantees income inequality, then, err, what's its point?

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Is Free Trade Working?

Some food for thought for us supporters of free trade.

Today's protectionist drift is similar to the challenges faced by the architect of the original New Deal. In August 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt declared;

'This Government intends no injury to honest business. The processes we follow in seeking social justice do not, in adding to general prosperity, take from one and give to another. In this modern world, the spreading out of opportunity ought not to consist of robbing Peter to pay Paul. In other words, we are concerned with more than mere subtraction and addition. We are concerned with multiplication also -- multiplication of wealth through cooperative action, wealth in which all can share.'

An interesting article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Kenneth F. Scheve, Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Matthew J. Slaughter, Professor of Economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, accuses globalisation of failing to spread the wealth and recommends higher taxes for the rich to avert a protectionist backlash.

Summary

'Globalization has brought huge overall benefits, but earnings for most U.S. workers -- even those with college degrees -- have been falling recently; inequality is greater now than at any other time in the last 70 years. Whatever the cause, the result has been a surge in protectionism. To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income.'

The authors argue that US policy is turning more protectionist because the US public is turning more protectionist, and the reason is stagnant incomes for all groups except the very richest. The 109th Congress introduced 27 pieces of anti-China legislation, the Doha Trade round is in tatters and other developed nations, particularly France, are upping the anti-foreigner rhetoric.

They then argue that this is a deeply worrying trend as globalisation has been so economically beneficial for both the US (adding $1 trillion to its economy and doubling its worker productivity) and for the developing world, creating an entire new middle class in less than a generation in places such as India and China.

They cite the three commonly expressed opinions as to why globalisation is faltering;

i) the successful lobbying efforts of a few industries that have been hit the hardest (e.g. farmers and manufacturers)

ii) policy makers and the business community have failed to make the case for free trade effectively.

iii) the need to balance economic interests with national security concerns has resulted in a more protectionist stance.

But they go on to dismiss all three arguments and lay the blame squarely at stagnating incomes and the uneven distribution of incomes. They point to data showing an 11% rise in real median wages versus a 58% rise for those in the 90th percentile of income and 121% for those in the 99th percentile. Another way of looking at this data is the CEO/worker ratio which has jumped from 80x in the 1980s to 425x in 2005 (see graph above). the last time data such as this appeared was in 1928 - just before the Great Depression (caused ironically by a rise in protectionism).

A combination of globalised free trade and high immigration is exerting immense pressure on wages of the low-skilled and they know it. Hence politicians (all the Democrat nominees for the Presidency are espousing some protectionist policies) are merely responding to growing resentment amongst the population.

The authors argue that supporters of free trade now face a stark choice; ensure workers share more of the spoils or accept that liberalisation is no longer sustainable. Given how important free trade is for the US economy, they argue that tax breaks must be distributed to the poorest workers to be paid for by the richest. Their solution is to eliminate payroll tax (15%) for those workers earning below the median wage and to increase them for the richest.

Update; Jason Soon points me to this very interesting paper. The authors point out that whilst income inequality is indeed rising, inequality by race and sex are rapidly diminishing, especially for American black and Latino women.

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