[FRANCE24] Australia's new conservative government on Thursday abolished an independent climate change commission set up by the previous Labor administration, as part of its plans to streamline bureaucracy. This is the approach that's never never mentioned, and I'm guessing never considered when talking about cutting the budget.
The Climate Commission was set up to provide apolitical and reliable information to the public about the science of climate change, emissions targets and international action being taken. I'm guessing it was then packed with partisans and did anything but what it was advertised to be doing. I could be wrong, of course. But probably not.
But Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservative coalition, which plans to repeal Labor's tax on corporate pollution and is the first post-war Australian government not to have a science minister, said an independent body was not needed and the role would be assumed by the Department of the Environment. The first serious step toward cutting the U.S. budget would be to pick some eentsy-weentsy notshit sinecure agency or bureau and abolish it. Anything serious it actually does, which it probably doesn't, can be folded into some existing organization and the hacks and time servers staffing it can be turned out to pasture.
"As part of the coalition's plans to streamline government processes and avoid duplication of services the commission's function to provide independent advice and analysis on climate change will be continued by the Department of the Environment," said new Environment Minister Greg Hunt. Be ready for the firestorm when consolidation is proposed. You'll quickly learn from any number of politicians that the Interstate Shipping and Drydock Paint Commission is sorely needed and essential to the functioning of a civilized society and that its abolition in a cleverly disguised racist attack on a Woman's Right to Choose®, just as bad, if not worse than, anything Hitler ever did.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2013 10:53 ||
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#1
Tony Abbott is off to a good start. Any other country afflicted with a trundlethrift government and a debauched political culture would do well to take notes.
#3
"The first serious step toward cutting the U.S. budget would be to pick some eentsy-weentsy notshit sinecure agency or bureau and abolish it." Transfer 1/10 of all other agencies and bureaus into that chosen agency and then use its size as an excuse to cut it. If all works well you can dump all of the partisans and incompentants (or at least 1/10th of them) in one swoop.
#5
Fred commented: I'm guessing it was then packed with partisans and did anything but what it was advertised to be doing. I could be wrong, of course. But probably not.
Give that man a cigar.
If you follow Tim Blair (http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/) down under you will have been seeing this bureaucratic abortion from day one. Flannery is one of the biggest AGW scam artists around, Flim Flam Flannery is as bad as Gore, Mann and the IPCC.
#1
he's right, technically only. It allows a profligate gubbamint to contain you spend into more debt. A steady sure hand like Obama's on the US financial tiller would surely avoid that by cutting spending to stay within the incoming receipts, right?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/19/2013 18:49 Comments ||
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#2
Agree wid #1 - Monetary or Currency denominations like Dollars + Coins = Guns = just a thingy widout value or consequence until somebody Human makes a use of it.
[DEVIL'S ADVOCATE'S AL "LUCIFER/SATAN" PACINO = "I DON'T DO THAT, KEVIN .... WHAT DID I SAY TO YOU ABOUT THE NEED FOR YOU TO BE WITH YOUR WIFE, WHAT WERE MY EXACT WORDS TO YOU, ... + HOW DID YOU RESPOND?" here].
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli has cut Democrat Terry McAuliffe's lead in half, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, but there's a Libertarian wildcard in the race who could complicate the final 50 days of the race.
A Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday showed McAuliffe with a narrowing 44 percent to 41 percent edge over Cuccinelli after weeks of polls gave the Democrat about a 7-point advantage.
In what could be a sign of discontent with both candidates, Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis tallied 7 percent in the poll of likely voters. Most of his support comes from self-described independents and it's not clear which candidate he hurts the most.
It's possible Sarvis is a late summer protest pick for voters disenfranchised by the nasty, negative race. Neither McAuliffe nor Cuccinelli is well liked by Virginians -- McAuliffe's favorability is split at 38 percent, while Cuccinelli has a net -17 favorability rating -- and 18 percent are undecided or may change their mind by Nov. 5.
Third-party candidates tend to see their support dwindle by Election Day. Many polls last year gave Constitution Party presidential candidate Virgil Goode, a former Virginia congressman, a chance to steal significant support from Republican nominee Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, the Publican nominee for president in 2012. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals.... in the Old Dominion. But in November, Goode pulled in just 0.33 percent of the vote. Libertarian Gary Johnson received 0.80 percent.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Living in VA I have noticed these two candidates have generated little excitment from their traditional party supporters.
This election will be a real hold your nose at the polls and select the least offensive. GOV Bob McDonnell really left Cuccinelli to deal with the results of several poor decisions.
#3
I'll vote for Cooch - what choice do I have? (McAuliffe isn't a choice, he's a disaster, and a greedy-assed bastard to boot.)
I'll PROUDLY vote for Jackson for Lieutenant Governor. Hope our Virginia Rantburgers can see their way clear to do the same.
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/19/2013 13:11 Comments ||
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Last time I talked to Ken Cuccinelli was at a book signing. I told him that he is the first candidate in my life whom I am going to vote FOR, rather than just against the other guy in the election.
Of course, I also will be voting against McAullife, but that was before I realized how slimy he is.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
09/19/2013 21:14 Comments ||
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#5
I still wish Bill Bolling were the Repub candidate, but we gotta go with what's available. :-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/19/2013 22:50 Comments ||
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Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you've already racked up, Congress. It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.
And I've heard people say, well, in the past, there have been negotiations around raising the debt ceiling. It's always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we're running up our debt,
...we did...
so people don't like to vote on it, and, typically, there's some gamesmanship in terms of making the President's party shoulder the burden of raising the -- taking the vote.
...certainly true in 2001-2008...
And then there's some political campaign later that smacks them around for saying, Joe Smith voted to raise the debt ceiling by $2 trillion. And it sounds terrible and it's a fun talking point for politics, but it always gets done.
And if there is a budget package that includes the debt ceiling vote, it's not the debt ceiling that is driving the negotiations; it's just it's stuck into the budget negotiations, because if you're going to take a bunch of tough votes anyway, you might as well go ahead and stick that in there.
And I have responsibilities at this point not just to the current generation but to future generations, and we're not going to set up a situation where the full faith and credit of the United States is put on the table every year or every year and a half, and we go through some sort of terrifying financial brinksmanship because of some ideological arguments that people are having about some particular issue of the day. We're not going to do that.
So the good news is that we can raise the debt ceiling tomorrow just by a simple vote in each chamber, and set that aside, and then we can have a serious argument about spending all the money I want to spend the budget. And there are significant differences still between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to the budget.
And since the Rethuglicans are eeeeeeevvvvil we have to do it Champ's way...
I'm tired of it, and I suspect you're tired of it, too, because it's pretty hard to plan your businesses when these kinds of things are looming at any given moment.
Remarks to the Business Roundtable (boggle) intended for the low-infos. Doesn't raise the debt? Well, okay then.
It's hard to plan a business when you don't know what your taxes are going to be next year, and what your health care costs are going to be, and what your disability contributions are going to be...
#4
Technically, Obama's right. The debt ceiling restricts the Treasury's ability to pay for debts *already* incurred. The *budget's* where future debt discussions should occur. That's where the Republicans should focus. Brinksmanship around the debt ceiling just makes them look stupid and gives the Dems ammunition with which to distract the masses from otherwise valid (sometimes) messages.
Posted by: Muggsy the Full Bosomed1713 ||
09/19/2013 12:06 Comments ||
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Spoken like a malignant narcissist. Can't accuse him of lying because it's technically true. An increased credit limit merely makes it possible to borrow more - as distinguished from the actual borrowing itself, which is what causes the increase in debt.
Of course, the increase is needed because there is every intention of borrowing more, which every "average person" who's ever had a personal little credit crunch understands.
NO SALE muggsy. If what obama is saying is true, then THIS raising of the debt cieling is LIKE THE PREVIOUS ONE. What happened during the previous one? Click on the link, and wow, Geithner sez the DEBT went up and now we won't be able to legally borrow money unless we raise the debt limit.
SO, before you blather that raising, not just a debt cieling in abstract, but THE UNITED STATES GOVERNEMMENT DEBT CIELING, will not ALLOW THE UNITED STATES GOVERNEMMENT DEBT to GO UP THIS TIME, please get Obama to explain what is different THIS TIME.
The way credit limits work is to prevent accumulation of excessive debt that it cannot be repaid. It is a CONTROL built into the Constitution for the House to "check and balance" the Executive branch.
oh, you don't like YOUR "Executive Branch" to be "checked and balanced" THIS TIME, when you "patriotically" asserted the right of the Legislative the "Check and balance" an "executive branch" that wasn't YOURS LAST TIME?
#11
Giving a visa card to your fashion obsessed teen doesn't raise your debt level either, but it doesn't take a genious to see that it will likely rise.
#12
Just do what Washington has been doing for over 50 years, rig the books. Just pass an act making the 2013 fiscal year closed on 31 August of this year. Shazam! suddenly 2013's books balance and we start a new fiscal year. Then next year change it to 31 July 2014. A year of 11 months. Why not? Just for info purposes, back in 1970 the fiscal year did end in July. However Congress couldn't get its job done in time so they gave themselves 3 more months to do nothing. Of course since Reid has run the Senate, we haven't had a budget too. No new taxes, no shut down. Just the usual for the Beltway creative bookkeeping lying.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you've already racked up, Congress. It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.
