KSFO San Francisco host Brian Sussman went undercover at Earth Day celebrations in Santa Cruz to ask the attendees one simple question “how can we save the planet?”. The results are highly disturbing and just as amusing.
I tend to be a tad too trusting when it comes to picking up hitch-hikers, and am usually happy to pick up a hitch-hiker if they seem OK to me, however if the nutbar in that video who is hitch-hiking across the country happened to somehow slip through my defences and get a lift from me, I can guarantee that I’d be dumping her quick-smart the moment she started spouting that nonsense at me. Either that, or I’d lock the doors and force her to listen to Andrew Bolt and Mark Levin for a while…this would be more satisfying, but probably wouldn’t have any effect on someone as ditzy as her, so probably wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
As for that guy who reckons carbon trading is a good idea…well I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but he should take a look at the Institute of Public Affairs’ Tim Wilson’s piece in The Australian yesterday about how ridiculously convoluted a carbon tax will be if the Gillard government ever manages to introduce one. Tim examines the carbon tax calculation on a birthday cake and discovers that it can’t be thoroughly calculated in a 1,000 word article because of its complexity. You can bet that a carbon trading scheme will be just as crazy.
Tim was interviewed by Alan Jones yesterday morning. I sent Alan an email about that interview and further problems with the carbon tax after the interview.
I enjoyed your interview with Tim Wilson about the carbon tax’s ridiculous complexity and costliness.
You might like to know that I am already seeing evidence that this tax will be rorted, thwarted and otherwise cheated, either mistakenly or on purpose. For example, I recently hired a car from Hertz for about four weeks. At the end of the rental I received a receipt from Hertz which had printed on it “Carbon emissions from this rental were approximately 0.00 grams”.
The question this leads me to is, what kind of gigantic government bureaucracy is going to be needed to enforce this monstrosity? And given the problems which Tim pointed out with working out the amount of carbon emissions for something as simple as a birthday cake, how many people are going to make mistakes and be fined by the tax office for it?
This tax will be a disaster if it ever happens. We must stop it.
Our old pals Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (now, why can I remember Paul’s first name right now?..I usually can never remember it) are up for the Musicians Of The Week award again. This time around, the feature song is Bleecker Street.
Fog’s rollin’ in off the East River bank
Like a shroud it covers Bleecker Street
Fills the alleys where men sleep
Hides the shepherd from the sheep
Voices leaking from a sad cafe
Smiling faces try to understand
I saw a shadow touch a shadow’s hand
On Bleecker Street
A poet reads his crooked rhyme
Holy, holy is his sacrament
Thirty dollars pays your rent
On Bleecker Street
Heard a church bell softly chime
In a melody sustainin’
It’s a long road to Caanan
On Bleecker Street
(harmonic vocal interlude)
Bleecker Street
NRL Round 6 Eels V Bulldogs Titans V Tigers Sea Eagles V Warriors Cowboys V Raiders Roosters V Broncos Knights V Sharks Panthers V Storm Rabbitohs V Dragons
AFL Round 4 Tigers V Magpies Hawks V Eagles Blues V Bombers Swans V Cats Power V Crows Suns V Demons Dockers V Kangaroos
This week’s award goes to Broken Bells, and the feature song for the week is the rather intriguing (bordering on spooky) October.
Interestingly, last week my iTunes told me that I hadn’t played the song since October…while I think it was just a bit befuddled, it was a situation which I immediately rectified as this song is far too good to leave it unplayed for such a length of time.
So you showed me ’round your town
To hell again and back
I love the certain way
You made all the friends that you depend on
I know it might seem odd
Kid, you’re not the only one
I remember myself as a lonely child
So I was
And you’ve got me wrong
You’ve got me…
Wrong just seems so right
’til the spark of morning light
And all those searching eyes
Do they scald your tender mind?
Remember what they say
There’s no shortcut to a dream
It’s all blood and sweat
And life is what you manage in between
But what you don`t know
Is you’re too young and eager to love
Seething,
I see you’re about to get into the ditch that you opened up
(aah…)
Wrong just seems so right
’til the spark of morning light
And all those searching eyes
Do they scald your tender mind?
So the stars alight
And leave you behind
You want it so, and I…
I come by light of an autumn moon
Sister you know enough
But for now just let it go
Don’t run, don’t rush
Just flow
Through the give and take you had to learn
How to cross the coals and not get burned
But you’re really just a little girl
Playing in the park ’til the sun goes down
Sometime you want to rise
One did it’s our desire
No doubt you think
You braided your own hair so you’re all grown up
Should you want to cross the line
Which way do you want to fly?
Pretend that love can help you find your way
But you’ve got me wrong
Yeah you’ve got me wrong
People tell me from time to time that I don’t publish enough photos of Nattie. They’re probably right, so you can have some of them this evening.
One is of Nattie on her new bed, which is a combination of her old bed (a sheepskin in a pillowcase, minus the half a swivel chair it used to be in) and a new section which is pillows covered in plastic.
The others are of Nattie in one of her favourite sunny spots, a spot which attracts plenty of sun in the morning and early afternoon.
Back in 2009 I mentioned a story which has, to-date, still received virtually no coverage over here. The story of left-wing organisation ACORN’s activities which led to irregularities in the voter registration process, which in turn helped with the election of Barack Obama.
The good news this week is that the increasingly discredited and broke ACORN has pleaded guilty, as Francis McCabe from the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
The grass-roots community organizing group ACORN once drew the ire of conservative groups and the attention of national media.
And when ACORN faced charges in Las Vegas of voter registration malfeasance in 2008, a flock of political spin doctors and lawyers rushed to its defense.
But three years later, with ACORN’s two co-defendants already having taken plea deals and the organization essentially defunct and in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the case received little attention as a lawyer on behalf of ACORN pleaded guilty Wednesday.
After months of negotiations and some legal wrangling, mostly because of a federal court-appointed bankruptcy trustee not wanting to deal with the criminal case, ACORN entered a guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters. Its criminal defense attorney, Lisa Rasmussen, entered the plea.
In negotiations with the Nevada attorney general’s office 12 other felony counts were dropped against the organization and prosecutors will not argue at the Aug. 10 sentencing hearing.
ACORN faces a maximum $5,000 fine. According to court records, when the national organization closed it’s doors in April 2010, the organization had real assets totaling less than $4,000 and “liabilities of more than $4 million.”
Prosecutor Patrick Ferguson said he was satisfied with the outcome of the case and said the reason he agreed not to speak at the sentencing hearing was “we’re not looking to take money away from other creditors, but a message had to be sent.”
[..]
Another defendant in the case, Amy Busefink, who in November pleaded no contest to two counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters, a gross misdemeanor, is appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute.
[..]
The field operative who created and ran the incentive program, Christopher Edwards, is serving three years of probation after pleading guilty to two gross misdemeanors.
Busefink is a longtime employee of Project Vote, a national grass-roots organization that registers voters and which worked in partnership with ACORN in 2008. Busefink oversaw Edwards, who was sentenced to a year of probation in January.
ACORN officials had maintained Edwards was ordered not to run the incentive program.
The program, called Blackjack or 21-Plus, rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed voter registration cards.
The 40-year-old organization, which once counted President Barack Obama among its ranks in Chicago, came under fire in recent years for its voter registration tactics.
This vile and deceptive organisation has received its just desserts for failing to play by the rules. This Amy Busefink woman can jump up and down all she likes, but I think she’ll find that she’s clutching at straws after a while, considering that everyone else involved has found themselves in plenty of trouble, and it’s just a matter until she does too.
NRL Round 5 Cowboys V Titans Tigers V Souths Warriors V Roosters Panthers V Raiders Sharks V Sea Eagles Storm V Eels Dragons V Bulldogs Broncos V Knights
AFL Round 3 Magpies V Blues Bulldogs V Suns Crows V Dockers Tigers V Hawks Eagles V Swans Demons V Lions Cats V Power Saints V Bombers
By now, no doubt, you’ve come across this in the media. Julia Gillard pronouncing “hyperbole” as “hyperbowl”.
As George Negus points out in that clip, hyperbole is “A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect”. Well, to use a Kevin Rudd phrase-of-choice, let me say this, Julia Gillard’s mispronunciation was a deliberate bit of hyperbole, an exaggeration designed to gain the attention of the media and distract them, however briefly, from the many ongoing problems with her government, while at the same time attempting to increase the public’s sympathy for her by making it look like the media is picking on her.
From a media front, it’s working. As for the public, I’d like to think that most Australians are smarter than that.
In case you haven’t already heard, ACTION bus services in Canberra will be severely lacking on the weekend, and may be a tad underwhelming on Monday morning as well. Territory and Municipal Services are blaming a different union this time around.
Due to industrial action by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), there will be disruptions to this weekend’s bus services, James Roncon, Director, ACTION, announced today.
“The AMWU has placed a ban on overtime work which means that buses cannot be maintained or re-fuelled this weekend which cripples the bus service,” Mr Roncon said. “In order to minimise any disruption to Monday services a decision has had to be made to run a Sunday timetable on Saturday and cancel Sunday services.
“There may also be reductions in the number of wheelchair-accessible buses which run on Saturday due to difficulties in re-fuelling them.
“While ACTION management will themselves assist with re-fuelling buses on Sunday evening to try and meet the Monday morning peak, it is simply not possible to run bus services on Sunday and not impact on Monday’s services.
[..]
Mr Roncon said that ACTION will do its best to minimise disruptions on Monday.
“Due to the action we are taking over the weekend, we are not expecting significant disruptions on Monday however there will be some buses off the road. We will ensure school runs operate and that any dropped services are on bus runs which are quickly followed by another bus. For more information on ACTION services please visit www.action.act.gov.au or call 13 17 10.”
So this time around it’s not the bus drivers, but rather the bus maintainers which are going on strike, so this strike doesn’t fit in with the regular-as-clockwork Transport Workers Union vs ACTION fights when the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement needs to be renewed, and if we’re going to see regular Australian Manufacturing Workers Union vs ACTION fights as well, then the question has to be asked: what can be done to make the contract negotiation process less disruptive to the public?
The answer seems fairly simple to me. At the moment, there is very little incentive within ACTION or the ACT Government to prevent these things from happening. ACTION will exist come-what-may; their TAMS overlords are public servants who will just end up somewhere else in the government during the next reshuffle; and the politicians have no real need to be concerned this far out from an election. On the other side, the unions have come to acknowledge that the only consequence to them from a strike is a small public backlash which is offset by public sympathy when the strikes are few and far between, especially when the TWU’s Klaus Pinkas is the man so effectively heading their public relations campaign. The strikes work well for the unions because they know that the public will ultimately blame the politicians and not the unions, and so the politicians will issue “fix it” directives to the public servants which, if the unions can hold their nerve for long enough, will result in a union victory, for the most part.
The trouble is, now that the AMWU have gotten in on the act, the strikes will become more regular. The couple of strikes once every few years at the behest of the TWU were tolerable…but doubling the frequency of strikes and making the effects last longer by adding another union in to the mix will just anger the public and lessen their sympathy for the unions. The public will demand corrective action from the politicians to prevent the regular strikes…and once it gets that far, the only two options are to either gut services so that less people rely on the service and therefore less people will be angered by strikes, or to sell it off and make it somebody else’s problem to deal with.
The latter option, privatising the bus service, is the more sensible option. From a political perspective, it’s better than minimising services, and from an operation perspective, it gives the new operator an incentive to prevent strikes as strikes equal lost revenue.
The government doesn’t really care about ACTION’s income as they are deliberately running it at a loss…and in a way, not running buses for a day or two saves them money, but for a private operator, the service is designed to make a profit, and when there is a strike, there is no income but the administrative overheads still exists, so they make a loss. These administrative overheads exist for the government as well, but they form part of the cost of running the government and don’t count in the equation.
The other benefits of a private bus service are that the bus service would actually have to meet the needs of the customers in order to turn a profit, and would therefore be more likely to run services which are wanted and needed instead of a gazillions indirect routes to distant locations via half the places in between. And then just to make the system even more responsive to customer needs, the government could issue a licence to bus operators and adjust the cost of their licence renewal based on factors such as on-time running and dropped runs. Additionally, multiple bus providers could compete for business within Canberra and/or focus on certain areas are types of services.
Having private operators instead of a government monopoly on bus services in Canberra is clearly the best option for both minimising the number of strikes and service disruptions, and for making the bus service a more desirable service by more closely meeting the needs of the people.
AFL Round 2 Saints V Tigers (Drawn match, half a tipping point) Kangaroos V Collingwood Power V Eagles Suns V Blues Dockers V Cats Bulldogs V Lions Swans V Bombers Hawks V Demons
NRL Round 4 Broncos V Panthers Rabbitohs V Sea Eagles Raiders V Titans Eels V Cowboys Knights V Dragons Sharks V Warriors Roosters V Tigers Storm V Bulldogs
Some fantastic news from the Ten Network today, confirming what has been believed to be happening for some time. Andrew Bolt, the Herald Sun columnist, MTR1377 presenter, Ten contributor, and former ABC TV ‘Insiders’ contributor and Nine contributor, is expanding his role at the Ten Network. No longer will he be relegated to the utterly ridiculous role of being the guy at the end of the desk making Twitter-length observations on The 7PM Project (one wonders if they use this format because they think that their core-demographic won’t understand anything longer, or because they think their core-demographic is so obsessed with Twitter that they won’t listen to anything longer), Andrew will now have his own show on Sunday mornings on Ten.
The Bolt Report will premiere on May 8, and will air at 10am. The show will provide a lead-in to Ten’s existing Sunday morning show Meet The Press which moves from its existing 8am timeslot to a 10:30am timeslot.
The timing for the decision couldn’t be better. Earlier this week, Nine’s veteran journalist Laurie Oakes announced that he will relinquish his role of providing the Sunday morning interview for Weekend Today…and quite frankly, whoever takes on this role (if anyone) will not have the same clout and respectability of Oakes, so Oakes’ departure from Sunday television leaves a void…Seven don’t have a serious political discussion or interview program on Sunday morning (they do muster up the occasional interview on Weekend Sunrise, but it is very unusual, and it only works when Andrew O’Keefe isn’t it “silly mode”) so that just leaves ABC TV and Ten.
ABC’s Insiders continues at 9am sans Andrew Bolt, but will presumably still keep other conservative commentators such as Piers Akerman and Gerard Henderson, and it’s a well-known fact that people who watch Insiders and hate the likes of Bolt, Akerman, Henderson and co. are more engaged in the program when they are on…so presumably the plan is to get people to switch over from Insiders at 10am to Bolt at 10:30 and then probably stick around for Meet The Press at 10:30.
It strikes me as clever programming, and Ten have seen that Bolt engages the audience on 7PM Project regardless of their opinion of his views, so this could very well be a winner. At the very least, it puts Ten’s political programming on at a more sensible time…Meet The Press was wasted at 8am up against the unstoppable fluff machines of Sunrise and Today. Ten are much better off counter-programming with youth-oriented music programming in the early hours and putting the serious stuff on at 10am after the adults have finished watching the news (and news-esque) programming on the other channels.
I’m looking forward to The Bold Report, and will make sure that I don’t miss a second of it.
I have come across two rather interesting cases of government waste this week. Two cases where money is being paid to government employees to carry out pointless tasks.
Firstly, I had a CT scan a couple days ago. Medicare was covering some of the scan, and I was paying the rest which, from memory, was $160. After I had paid the $160 and my Medicare details had been recorded, I was informed that I would be receiving a cheque from Medicare in about four weeks time which would be addressed to the doctor who performed the scan, and that I would be required to forward the cheque to the clinic.
This is utterly ridiculous. If I had paid the full amount for the scan, I could have walked in to any Medicare office and received the Medicare portion of the payment in cash on the spot. And if I go to a bulk-billing doctor, the payment for the consultation goes straight to them…so why are the government wasting all of this time sending out payments to people who aren’t the ultimate recipient of the payment, only for the cheque to be handed to the doctor who then receives their payment? Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay the doctor directly via an electronic transfer? The answer is yes…but I suppose the government wouldn’t need as many people to administer that.
Secondly, I received a call from the tax office. My phone was off at the time, so they left a message which included my full name and the fact that they wanted to talk to me about my superannuation, and oddly that I “have no need to panic”. So I called them back on the number provided and, to my astonishment, got straight through to a human (the number must have a high priority in the phone queues) who asked me for all sorts of personal information (I googled the phone number first, it was legit) and then informed me that they wanted to talk to me about a “lost” superannuation account so that they could instruct the superannuation fund to reinstate it. He took a few moments to look up the account and then said “oh, that’s odd, the account is active”. My immediate reply was “let me guess, the Australian Super account?”, I received an affirmative response and then said to him “I sorted that out about three months ago” after which he apologised for taking up my time and asked if there was anything else he could help me with…not that he had actually helped me. I declined and the call ended.
Apart from the wasted time and expense of having a public servant make calls about superannuation accounts which are perfectly fine, the whole “lost super” thing is a rort and a giant waste of time. You pay fees to a private business to maintain these superannuation accounts, so they should not expire (or “become lost” to use the government’s preferred terminology) and default to government ownership simply because you haven’t contributed to them for a while. That’s like having a savings account with a bank and the bank seizing the funds because you haven’t checked the balance in the last week.
And then there’s the question of, if he can just push a button and reactivate the account with Australian Super (although I suspect it’s not so much the push of a button, but rather the completion of about 73 forms, a number of letters to the super fund, and about seven government employees overseeing the whole thing), why doesn’t he just go and do it…why ring me about it?
It amazes me that my tax dollars are going towards funding these kinds of useless and wasteful activities. It is a clear sign that the government is too big and could do with a bit of a prune.
It is becoming very tedious seeing government after government after government pretend to be very concerned about cigarettes, and implementing all of these measures to supposedly cut the smoking rate, when all that they are really doing is either punishing the smoker or the cigarette companies with higher fees and taxes, achieving very little, and reaping massive tax windfalls at the same time.
This time, they’re at it again, although they’re trying to punish the retailers as well, and the “logic” behind it is becoming more than a tad strained.
The federal government wants all cigarette packaging to be olive green, because research shows that is the least attractive colour for smokers, the health minister says.
Under proposed legislation aimed at reducing smoking rates in Australia, all logos will be removed from cigarette packaging, and tobacco companies will be required to print their brand name in a specific font.
[..]
“We’ve done a lot of research to ensure that we make the cigarette packs as unattractive as possible…,” Ms Roxon said.
“Apparently dark olive is the least attractive colour for any smokers and in particular for young people.”
Does Ms. Roxon really think that I’m stupid enough to believe that people will stop smoking because the packaging is not pretty? Those health warnings are pretty grotesque, more grotesque than some olive green cardboard, and people still smoke, so why does she think that olive green packaging will do what has not been done to date?
Realistically, this is just another swipe at the retailers, especially the smaller ones. The whole “you’re not allowed to display the packages, they have to be hidden” and now added on “when the cupboard is opened so that you can get a packet out for a customer, other customers must only see a heap of olive green and not be able to tell that these are cigarette packets” only serves to make it harder for smaller retailers to sell the cigarettes. People won’t stop buying them, they’ll just move to the larger retailers because they won’t know that the smaller retailers are selling them…and in the case of the corner shop where people duck in for a packet of smokes, a bottle of milk and the newspaper, having this business move to the service station up the road could very easily put them out of business.
But that’s OK, because that will look good on government statistics as they’ll come out in twelve months and tell us how “30% less retailers now stock cigarettes”. They’ll proudly announce their “successes” while ignoring the fact that they just damaged yet another industry and put people out of work.
And then there’s Nicola’s other bizarre statement.
“This is about taking away the last opportunity that tobacco companies have in Australia, to try to market their products by making them look luxurious, or pretending that they might be light and better for your health.”
Oh come on Nicola, nobody actually believes that cigarettes are good for your health, or that light cigarettes are better for you than other cigarettes. People know this, and they choose to smoke, something which I should remind you is a perfectly legal activity.
It really is about time that the government either leave people alone who are doing something which is perfectly legal, or they prove that they are concerned about cigarettes by banning them outright, and offering nicotine patches to smokers to alleviate them of their need to smoke.
An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore, who announced just before 5am that he’d been on for another four hours.
G’day Andrew,
Gee, what is this today? April Fools Day all over again? We’ve got Barry O’Farrell abolishing the Environment Department, a school in Bondi dropping the word Easter, and poor old Alan needing to take the morning off, leaving you on an extra-long-super-dooper shift, just to confuse those of us who aren’t used to daylight saving yet.
I feel for you…I had to do something similar at work yesterday because the big boss forgot to ask me if I’d like to do some overtime and thought he had asked, so I got stuck with it anyway…not that it bothered me too much…I did get to watch a Bulldogs AFL match in the process. I’d imagine that filling in for Alan is a bit the same for you…a slight inconvenience, but enjoyable and worthwhile.
Have a great morning.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Of course I forgot to add to the list, the caller who was talking about how his kid’s school has renamed the “time out chair” as the “thinking chair”, and then there’s Seven’s Sunday Night offering half a million dollars to help them solve something. This all has to be a joke, surely.
