Brookes News Update

Why tax cuts and not consumer spending rescued the US economy: By cutting capital gains President Bush lifted a huge burden off production by generating additional savings. It is these tax cuts that spurred the economy. Therefore they gave the US economy something it sorely needed - more investment
Inflation and the price of oil: The yearly rate of growth of the CPI less food and energy edged up to 2.8 per cent in August from 2.7 per cent in July - the biggest 12-month gain in nearly five years. So did the Fed cause the rise or was it the price of oil?
Is monetary policy killing Australian manufacturing?: Australia's ratio of manufacturing to GDP is one of the lowest in the developed world. Our economists tell us not to worry because this is a natural process. But what if it isn't? What are the consequences for living standards if this shift in manufacturing has been caused by the Reserve Bank's loose monetary policy?
Liberal Party sabotaging its own labour market deregulation policy: By imposing more regulations on firms the Government is admitting that it has no genuine understanding of how labour markets work. Is that why it no longer claims that deregulated labour markets generate increased productivity?
Day of Muslim rage: What else is new?: Nothing Muslim - be it law, music, written words, or cultural practices - can be criticized. When anyone has the audacity to complain about something Islamic, the fanatics automatically take to the streets in numerous places around the world and in engage in orgies of barbaric behaviour
Terrorism and the West's path to self-destruction: In recent years there have been many Islamic acts of terror committed against Western countries. All of them were openly or covertly supported by most Muslim rulers and are silently condoned by most of the Islamic communities around the world
Inflation fallacies, prices and houses: Much economic commentary, particularly in our newspapers, makes for truly depressing reading so poor is much of the analysis - particularly with respect to inflation

**************************

ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a press release about the enormously biased media hounding of Senator George Allen. I rarely comment on individual Congressional races but this is a case of outright media persecution on essentially baseless grounds. Previous posts from me about what the Senator was originally accused of are here and here

Sowers of sexual confusion: ""Transgender activists are aggressively targeting our public school children this fall," said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. "These sexually confused individuals have made it their goal to deceive our kids into thinking they're the opposite sex. This insanity must stop. Our new report, "Will Cross-Dressing Activists Come To Your School?" exposes this dangerous effort to confuse our children." TVC's Back to School Report details the growing movement of transgender activists, including teachers, counselors and pediatricians who are teaching children that being male or female is "fluid" and changeable. "This is absolutely crazy, but pediatricians from some of the nation's most prestigious children's hospitals are involved in this gender confusion movement," said Lafferty. "Children who suffer from a Gender Identity Disorder are being redefined by these radical pediatricians as `gender variant' children who should be affirmed in their sexual confusions. These children need serious therapy, not affirmation for their gender confusion"

Is your IP address harboring pedophiles?: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most outlandish and delusional thing uttered last week by a small, powerful Hispanic man was not Hugo Chavez ranting at the United Nations about El Diablo. It was U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales telling a Senate panel that the Justice Department must have two years worth of history on every American's Web site usage. Gonzales claimed the info hoarding is needed to stop child pornography. Assuming the Bush administration really believes that -- and we'll get to that -- collecting giant stacks of cyber-hay in order to find pedophiles is madness."

Why Bush will nuke Iran: "The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan. Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran."

Where's the integrity?: "The Senate is poised to take up, as soon as this week, the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006. Some say the act is an overdue, common-sense measure to prevent voter fraud; others protest that it's a clever attempt at voter suppression, if not outright disenfranchisement. Regardless of who's right one thing is certain: If passed, the act will spawn considerable litigation. In fact, the day before the House passed the bill last week a Fulton County, Georgia superior-court judge struck down a nearly identical Georgia statute."

Socialist man in the Big Easy: "Marxists long theorized that communism would bring about the new socialist man. Through communist programs, man would turn his sole purpose to laboring and struggling for the greater good of the collective. Through socialist policies and redistribution, New Orleans has raised from its ruin a new socialist man. However, instead of working for the collective, this risen New Orleans man does not work at all."

Chicago Gets Its First Wal-Mart: "Wal-Mart opened its first store in Chicago, a little more than two weeks after Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed an ordinance requiring all 'big-box' stores to pay their employees $10 an hour by 2010. More than 15,000 people applied to work at the 142,000-square-foot store, which is in the economically depressed Austin section on the West Side. Wal-Mart officials estimated that the store would produce 490 jobs. Critics of the chain's urban expansion, including some aldermen who were unable to override Mr. Daley's veto, said they would continue to push for higher wages for employees of the city's big-box stores." [If workers have too few employers bidding for their services, it hardly makes sense to crack down on those that are!]

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************