Author: admin

Well, they’ve done it again. The Andrews govt have shoved through the privatization of Vicroads (even earlier than I thought). Not only will you have to pay massive increased rego etc, but it also looks likely they will introduce road pricing- so that Transurban can now charge tolls on roads that were ours and we have already paid for through our taxes. Whats also interesting is the secretive process here, where there is no real public auction, just a super-quiet trade sale. I wonder why?

Naturally at the same time as this scam was being passed, the Andrews govt made sure to create a few media stunt distractions; idiotic ‘conversion laws’ that will never affect a single person in the state (nor will ever be invoked in litigation) and a bit of indigenous virtue signalling (making needless apologies to the neverending aboriginal complaint industry while making sure to get some good visuals for the nightly TV).

Of course, the media fell hook line and sinker for these ‘announceables’, barely scrutinizing (with a few notable exceptions) the outrageous VicRoads giveaway while giving saturation cover (and a few smug pointless OpEds) to the media stunts. Their gullibility is incredible.

The one off cash boost received by the crooks in the Andrews govt will be quickly wasted on bread and circuses to cover up the fact the state’s broke, and the voters will lap it up (for the few months it lasts). Its an incredible achievement, grab short term stamp duty cash in a population ponzi, flog off the monopoly port, set up a needless monopoly in PEXA, and the Land Titles Office (no more land security) and STILL almost immediately go bankrupt. Well, as long as the bloated parliamentary super gets paid and there’s a few overpaid jobs for mates, all is well.

Just enjoy paying $3,000 yearly rego. and tolls for roads that were already yours for the next 40 years- the media decided it wasn’t important- so it wasn’t!

Canberra is the seat of power of the federal government in Australia.  The federal government has power over taxation, social security, defence, education,health, aged care (through the states) etc etc.

Media companies know this, and this is why there is an enormous and well equipped parliamentary press gallery, with camera operators, sound crew, everything. This press gallery never rest, pumping out thousands of stories, with one common element:

They are all crap.

The press gallery take all their energy and resources, and the fact they are formally accredited and given access by Parliament and write bullshit gossip about the Canberra bubble and that’s it. 

A few years ago, the press gallery, with a straight face, awarded its ‘scoop of the year’ award to a journalist who exposed the affair between Barnaby Joyce and his staffer. Yep, in all the issues of funding and legislation and environmental destruction and strikes and wages and states and governments, the press gallery thought the number one issue it had to deal with was a minister having an affair.

It’s the same now with all the media coverage regarding the allegations regarding staffers in Canberra. (Note – of course – if a crime’s been committed, let the police investigate, and let the law take its course).

To the press gallery, this story is the most transcendent, important issue ever to arise in this country. Because it happened in their workplace, in their little circle. And because the Press Gallery HATE writing about policies- (because when they write about real issues, it takes the focus off them, and their gossipy little world)- they will focus on this story, to the exclusion of everything else, for the rest of the year.

The Press Gallery are people who, if granted, access to ask questions at the Yalta conference, would pepper the leaders with ‘gotchas’ about their dress sense, or their feelings about the weather, or fights and scandals amongst the staff. Who cares about the future of post war Europe?! Thats boring!

Same with our press gallery here. Who cares about fires, taxes, social security, collapse of aged care etc etc?. That’s dull! What matters is what happens in our little bubble, amongst our little coterie of friends. That’s all, folks!

The ABC ‘news’ website is now unreadable, as every single story out of Canberra has to have a feminist angle (as does virtually every other story it carries).

The Canberra bubble is not an irrelevant prime ministerial insult (and the obvious bristling by the press gallery at this shows just how deep this description cut). The Bubble is real, and the Press Gallery’s simple inability to do their jobs and write about policy is a core reason Australia is becoming a joke, with skyrocketing corruption and pointless government waste and jobs for mates. Why oh why can’t we have a better press gallery?

Welcome to 2021.  Trump has departed, Biden has arrived.  Here are the new rules:

Everyone must display their virtue, as loudly and as constantly as possible. If you’re not sure how or what to signal (don’t worry, this is a common problem), just watch what everyone else is doing, and just follow and cheer even louder than they are.

Equality is a big buzzword now, as it should be. Lets get as many people into this cause as we can!  Just do note, to work in the Biden administration or campaigns, you’ll pretty much need a high class Ivy League education – we really can’t allow any deadwood through.  Upset? But surely you knew that here on the progressive side of politics we have very strict hierarchies. (Probably a reason why we’re so successful!).

Remember, all immigration is good, and borders are bad. At a time of record unemployment, we just need to ‘staple a green card’ to foreign university graduates so they can work for a designated employer. And boy are they keen workers! (I mean, you would be too, if you were bonded to a particular employer and deportation was hanging over your head).  Anyway, its all good, their silicon valley employers (like you should be) are cheering high immigration to the rooftops!  People who want to control the borders or have American jobs for American workers are, unfortunately, just not patriotic.

From now on, feelings are paramount. Nobody has the right to make anyone else feel bad.   There is a simple test for this. If your speech makes us feel worse in any way, its hate speech and must be censored. Oh, did I say ‘censored’? That’s too harsh. I meant to say, ‘stopped’.  To do this is very simple. We have some very nice people (of the right elite background, as explained above), (carefully selected because they know what’s good for others) to prevent such speech. The main thing is that people can say things we don’t like on Twitter or on the web, and we have to stop it before it starts.  I hope you’ll understand; (even if you don’t, you don’t have a choice in the matter).  This also applies to misogynist comments- which are easily identifiable as they are any statement by a male that a female disagrees with.

We also need to regulate things. Now that offending others and unapproved free speech are (finally) due to become criminal offences there is a drastic need for more laws, (with the necessary committees and bureaucrats to implement them).  Whats fantastic is we already have a built in elite ready and willing to implement them.  The more laws, the better.

Whats also incredible is how Covid totally changed on January 20^th 2021! Up to that point, it was a signal government failure, ravaging the land and a bitter indictment of the president. But from January 20^th onwards Covid has become primarily a medical issue, and not to be politicized!

Anyway, enjoy the smugness! It may very well turn out to be permanent.

Well, they’re at it again.  All the smug media elites are shutting down Donald Trump’s Twitter (imagine the outcry at this attack on free speech in years previous), shutting down a free speech site (Parler), thus proving the brief flowering of the internet (1994-2010 or so) as a open network devoted to free speech has now been fully converted into a bland pointless comments-not-allowed-here festival of approved right-on-bland.

Yes, his fans should have been stopped invading the Capitol. Yes, there comes a point where you have to accept the referees decision about the election.

But the sheer amount of censorship on display by Biden’s smug supporters- now openly proclaiming their bias at every instance, really makes you stop to consider. Closing Twitter accounts?  Shutting down the POTUS twitter account?  Shutting down a free speech twitter site- not just not linking to it from other sites, but literally shutting it down by removing its hosting?  No more free speech for you.

Biden supporters, the New York Times, all the typical media mob have one core, central, conceit. They know better than you.  I think its slowly dawning on people that ‘hate speech’ now means ‘speech we disagree with’. And note that virtually every totalitarian state has started with these same benign intentions- we have to fight hatred, we need to guide things.  We know what’s good for you. No free speech for you.

Ever wondered why big business is so keen on Joe Biden? Strange, isn’t it, that the Democrats are so feted by elites far and wide.

Well, wonder no further.  Here’s Biden’s policy on ‘skilled’ immigration.  It’s a complete and total sellout to the mega-corporations champing at the bit for cheap, (but above all bonded) labor.

What these companies really want are armies of workers who face deportation if they stop working. This is why silicon valley is virtually a place where citizens need not apply for jobs; and its routinely demanded that people work 90 hour weeks (while being paid for 40).

The H1B schemes, ridiculous ‘staple a green card’ proposals (which should read ‘staple a compliant foreign servant’) all perpetuate the myth that there is a critical shortage of STEM and IT skills (no), that the foreign students attending university are all highly skilled (no) and that American citizens wont do these jobs (double-no).  American citizens do, however, insist on their normal workplace rights, and therefore must not be hired under any circumstances.

Biden is openly planning to destroy whats left of the US middle class by bringing in bonded labor. And the elites are cheering him on.

Has anyone else noticed there are no more real jobs or real industries in Australia? Every second advertisement we see is some virtue-signalling government nonsense, and most jobs today are simply for drudges to our vastly overregulated state- a compliance officer, a ‘community awareness’ worker, a public sector bureaucrat etc etc.

There are no factories, no manufacturing, no real work. If people commit the crime of (horror of horrors) coming to a free exchange with other people by selling services such as a uber driver or door dash, the press gallery and the state scream ‘wage theft’ and rush to overregulate it, thus shutting these sectors down and putting people out of work. We can’t have free exchange, now can we.

The amount of pointless fiddling is awe inspiring. People whose entire career it is to interpret complex tax laws, so that one activity can be dressed up as another to gain a benefit. People who pass more and more compliance burdens on small business then delight in breaching people for not complying.

And of course,  as our economy groans and collapses under the weight of too many rules; our elites demand the solution- more regulations! What they’ve done so far hasn’t worked, so they need to fiddle more, need to run an awareness campaign. They get particularly furious when ordinary people aren’t doing what they are told. And of course, every bureaucrat needs more assistants.

Our economy is dying, almost dead.  When are we going to stop this?

This really is nauseating. Kathy Jackson, corrupt union official, who was ordered to repay 1.4m to the Health Services Union (representing some of the lowest paid people in Australia), Kathy, who demanded and got, money from a cancer institute (and used it for herself), has been found guilty of fraud and received….no jail time whatsoever.

Next time you read of someone who speeds and gets jail, think of Kathy. When someone gets overpaid a pension and gets jail, think of Kathy. When someone throws a punch in a pub and gets jail, think of Kathy.

If an ordinary person is charged with a crime in this country, they are put under enormous pressure from the word go to plead guilty. Legal aid lawyers will tell them to plead and get it over with. And mostly, our courts reflect that ‘churn and burn’ of quick guilty pleas. The guilty (but wealthy) however, exploit our useless glacial legal system with limitless funding and procedural challenges to eventually grind out plea deals like this one. Ironically, its only the richest people who can hide all their assets that receive the most legal aid funding.

If you are rich in this country, and you steal, nothing will happen. Kathy has, but of course, declared ‘bankruptcy’ (which in Australia means you are sitting on a fortune that others cannot touch).

Her pathetic ‘suspended sentence’ is a slap in the face for all the hard working union members, all the cancer workers, who funded her lavish lifestyle. Obviously as she’s not going to be rehired as a union official, she’s not going to be in a position to breach it (and of course, she doesn’t need any more money anyway). Right now, she’s likely got a huge smile on her face (and why wouldn’t she?). She got away with it.

Australia is run for the rich and well connected. Steal whatever you like, if you’re wealthy and well connected, no problems. Its only the ‘little people’ who go to jail (in greater and greater numbers).

Just remember, when you are regulated more and more; when you see more and more little people fined and hauled away to jail, that Kathy Jackson got away with it.

Daniel Andrews latest privatization con is the big one. He’s going to flog off Vicroads next year (in a ‘no bid’ trade sale to his mates), and, to fatten up the calf, include compulsory road pricing in the deal. 

So at the same time you’ll have to pay whatever the private company demands to renew your license (you’ll have no choice; unless you stop driving), owners of electric cars and others will start being charged for every kilometer- with the money remitted likely to Transurban or some other private monopolist at the rate they want.

You can usually tell state labor is planning a fraud like this when they start virtue signalling on irrelevant diversionary crap that nobody (apart from the press gallery) cares about- usually gay conversion therapy or puppy farms etc etc.  Noisy press releases and pointless legislation follows, which establishes the misleading idea that labor is ‘progressive’ (on issues nobody cares about, which will never be litigated and which cost no money), while, (in the real world), they get ready to flog a state monopoly off to their private sector mates (forever).

Expect this scam to sail through parliament about mid 2021; Daniel Andrews will bank the upfront payment (and loudly waste it on useless temporary public sector salaries and a few circuses and ad campaigns) and the real licensing/road ripoff will start in 2022.

Don’t bother trying to follow it in the media- they aren’t interested, as it doesn’t have a simplistic soundbite or an indigenous angle.  The fact we’re being royally screwed with African level private sector corruption isn’t a story, unfortunately. Oh well.

The reason: having to deal with government. Having to deal with the sheer amount of bureaucratic nonsense and pettifogging overregulation in our day-to-day lives.

Note this is not the same thing as wanting tax cuts. This is usually how liberals (with a hand-wave) dismiss conservative voters’ concerns about government regulation- ‘they are just greedy and want to pay less tax’. No. They are sick and tired of the mind boggling, time wasting, pointless bureaucracy, which is so maddening as it is unneeded. In fact, where I am (Australia), taxes aren’t particularly high, but oh my god how we are overregulated.

Why don’t conservatives talk more about this reason? Its massive. I can count at least a dozen people in my circle who’ve been thoroughly converted from voting for anything that involves big government. And there are many more out there.

Obviously many non-conservative voters are bureaucrats themselves, and just don’t understand how much they are resented, and how pointless most of their huffy-shouldered clipboard ‘work’ is.

The opposition to Obamacare is instructive. Firstly, despite what the media says, this opposition is from the ground up. It is not directed from the top, by evil insurance companies etc etc, it is driven by ordinary Americans who have a deep set hatred of government bureaucracy. A look at the massive, genuinely grassroots, rallies against it would immediately show you that. (Now let me say firstly I think national healthcare is probably a good idea, and its one of the few areas where the free market fails and government should run it. But I find it equally curious how we dismiss without explanation people’s extreme and well founded distaste of government as some sort of delusion).

Finally, I am not opposed to sensible regulations that stop me polluting the rivers, injuring workers etc etc. I am against the mountain of pointless rules and regulations, of useless commissioners and public servants that blight our lives with rubbish.

It’s time we talked more about this issue.

The Victorian state budget is out, and as predicted, it’s a massive waste-a-thon.  Billions being spent to (a) keep our useless closed-shop bureaucrats in jobs (so they’ll keep voting labor) while (b) handing out various useless focus group tested virtue signalling bullshit payments to sectional interests.

Naturally, our spoon fed press gallery are in delight, as they’ve been given ‘announceables’ and ‘exclusives’ and they can run the big myth that this is somehow a necessary stimulus rather than being a bloated public sector salary-athon waste.

As usual, people are misunderstanding the Andrews govt, thinking its somehow a ‘progressive’ one, when in fact it’s a far right gang of vicious privatizers, who’ve flogged off the monopoly port, the titles office, handed our road system to Transurban for nothing (and recently caved in pathetically on the tunnel costs overruns) and are about to flog off Vicroads licensing.

The recent rubbish ‘public housing’ announcement promising billions was the usual media managed ‘exclusive’ spoonfed announceable, it will involve flogging off public housing sites on the promise to make 1% of the units built public (and none will be built anyway). (Its necessary to sell off all public housing in order to save it).

Dan Andrews knows that all he has to do is fund a few cheap virtue signalling ‘awareness raising’ ads on TV, noisily appoint some indigenous females and apologize for things that didn’t really happen, and the ABC/Fairfax/SBS press gallery collective will lap it all up as conclusive proof he’s ‘progressive’ when in fact, in the real world, he’s just a privatizing fraudster giving everything away to his rich property developer mates and donors.  (Anything to avoid journalists actually having to analyze or write about policies!).

Anyway, it’s all too late to do anything about this crap.  We’re stuck with the debt for the next hundred years.