Samuel's Blog

Twitter Updates for 2012-05-08

• America will be performing in Wollongong in September. I'll be on leave, so I think I'll go unless they're coming to Canberra too. #
• If Wayne Swan is giving away once-off payments in tonight's budget, it proves his once-off $900 stimulus cheques were politically motivated. #
• This hit my phone at 6:25am. Countdown to Aussie media picking it up…“@foxnewsalert: CIA thwarted an underwear bomb plot on US-bound jet” #
• Thearted bomb plot story. Fox mobile alert 6:25am. Herald Sun 7:06am. Ten Breakfast 7:07am. The Australian 7:17am. New York Post 7:40am. #
• Ticker on Seven's Sunrise just ran a mention of the thwarted bombing of a US bound plane. 8:03am: about 100 minutes after the Fox alert. #
• @2CC Jorian, as frustrating as Slipper and Thomson are, parliament can not and should not act to evict elected MPs without legal grounds. in reply to 2CC #
• Ahhh, 1:24 in the afternoon. Time for bed. The joys of life as a shift worker…your timetable fails to resemble anyone else's timetable. #
• Listening to the nation's best analysis of the federal budget with @Ross_Greenwood on @2GB873 streaming at http://t.co/JxRtzpMU until 9pm #
• I was highly amused this morning to hear Seven's "finance expert" David Koch ask if lottery winnings are taxed. No, and he should know that. #
• Just noticed Peggy Lee's "It's A Good Day" on a Garnier commercial. Jim Ball used to play that every day on his radio show. #
• @MichaelByrnes I believe Jim is happily retired in a seaside suburb of northern Sydney. in reply to MichaelByrnes #
• Rather than all of these spending programs, Wayne Swan would be better off delivering a corporate tax cut. Benefits would reach everyone. #
• Wayne's way will boost inflation by directly giving people money, creating an excuse for price rises. #
• A company (or better yet, across the board business tax cut) would have lowered prices, increased spending, and boosted tax revenue. #
• Wayne Swan can complain about his company tax cut not passing all he likes, but it's his fault for attaching unacceptable conditions to it. #
• @ABCNews24 @jotorrens it's "hear hear", not "here here". #
• RT @coffeyn: About 5 times now Swan has addressed the Chair as 'Mr Speaker'. Prob written in his speech. Some EL2 in Treasury will cop it #
• So, the government's electronic health records. Optional or mandatory? I'm quite happy with my paper records NOT being on a Govt database. #
• Note how the 2012/2013 surplus was created. They shifted spending to 2011/2012, blowing out this year's deficit. In business, that's fraud. #

May 8th, 2012 at 09:00pm

Real unemployment is through the roof on Obama’s watch

This is a graph of the number of people in the US who are in the labor force…that is, working or looking for work.

(image credit: Heritage Foundation)

When people drop out, they are not counted as unemployed, hence the reason the number of people out of work has soared, but the official unemployment rate has not.

Notice too that the big decline started after Obama took office, not before as his reelection campaign would have you believe.

Official statistics can be manipulated in so many ways, and official unemployment seems to be one of the favourites of governments.

Samuel

May 8th, 2012 at 07:34am

Wayne Swan can bribe the voters all he wants…it won’t help him or the country

An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore

Good morning Andrew,

I see that Wayne Swan is reportedly going to start handing out more so-called “one-off payments” after tonight’s budget.

I remember when the federal government was not in debt and claimed that the best way to stimulate the economy was to plunge the government in to debt by sending everyone a one-off $900 cheque, along with the various other spending debacles like the pink bats, school shade cloths and overpriced digital set top boxes. It didn’t help…the Australian economy is worse now than it was in 2009, mostly due to the government’s actions.

Now the government is in serious amounts of debt, and Wayne Swan promises a surplus which might make the surplus smaller, except for the fact that most, if not all, of the surplus comes from budget tricks rather than actual savings. But instead of doing the responsible thing and paying off as much of the debt as is feasible, he wants to hand out more one-off cheques…he must sense an election coming soon.

It just proves that these payments, like the stimulus payments, had nothing to do with responsible economic management, and everything to do with bribing voters to overlook serious incompetence in the government. I’ll tell you right now Andrew, the man who once told Alan Jones that “traffic jams cause inflation” will not be the Treasurer once the people have had their say at the ballot box, no matter how much money he borrows to bribe the voters.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

May 8th, 2012 at 03:56am