Author Archives: lawofmarkets

Columnists who try men’s souls

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I get all the papers now since there is so little to do that the extra crossword puzzles and sudokus help fill in the day. But these are columns that try men’s souls, I can tell you, and from The Oz as well. And once again, Daniel Andrews is the cause. Let me take you first to Angela Shanahan and her pathetic Let’s give these poor pollies a break. There we find:

The Victorian Premier is held up as an incompetent fool, a crazed ideological warrior with no sense of “reality”, careless of the econo­mic devastation cutting a swath through his state, and adopting totalitarian methods of control.

And so he is and all of that. Angela, however, thinks we are being too hard on this poor, misbegotten sod:

These two premiers [Dan and the premier of Queensland] have become symbols of ideological warfare that preceded the pandemic. Many attacks directed at them have nothing to do with how well, or badly, they are managing to control the spread of the virus in their states. It is a type of proxy warfare. The border closures and even the economic versus fatality arguments are an extension of the ideological warfare that apparently cannot be halted even in times of national emergency.

She then added this, gratuitously to my mind, towards the end, so that I will now feel free to never read another word she writes:

Generally our politicians are men and women of quite high calibre and good character. (If you don’t believe me, look at the two contenders for the American presidency.)

Unbelievable. You can tell almost everything about someone’s politics by their attitude to Donald Trump.

Then we come to Katrina Grace Kelly who writes in her column today, We are managing the pandemic quite well, so stop the wild shrieking. Someone I had long ago stopped reading. The heading did get me in today, but the contents will keep me away for even longer after this. She is discussing the poll results that show Daniel Andrews has 61% approval for his handling of the Corona V:

This data rises above the chorus of remarks by federal coalition politicians, and hyperbolic and often inaccurate criticism from the angry tub-thumpers on SAD (Sky after Dark). On SAD, our Premier is called “Chairman Dan” or “Dictator Dan” and Victoria is referred to as a “socialist republic” and a “failed state”. These insults demean every Victorian, regardless of how they vote.

What about the extra 750 deaths in Victoria, you absurdist goose? The Sky After Dark crowd are trying to tell you something, but you are obviously too thick with sentimental eyewash to take in what they are saying. Any thoughts on the Chinese Road and Brick business? These are the first four comments under “Best”, that is, the comments most in keeping with the views of others.

Fact number one: the Victorian government’s massive incompetence in handling hotel quarantine has led to awful human and economic loss. It’s the biggest failure of public policy and administration in modern Australian history. This, really, is all that needs to be known. Nothing to do with the political opposition or politics more generally. Just sheer, industrial scale incompetence by the Victorian government.

Walking though the Geelong CBD is hard not to notice around 20% of the shop fronts are empty. The economic pain Andrews has caused with the bungled hotel quarantine program is yet to be felt and will linger for years to come. Andrews economic record is headed south at a rapid rate. He wasted $1.3 billion on not building a road and now the road he’s building to replace has a cost overrun of $3 billion and it not even half build. It pretty clear Andrews government is following the trajectory of the Cain Government and like Cain I expect Andrews to jump ship just as the economic pain starts to wash across the deck.

In this country your state of Victoria has failed to control this virus. 700+ deaths , billions lost, thousands of jobs lost, denial of civil liberties resulting in the hardest lock down in the world. People are shrieking because the ALP have lowered the standard of accountability of Government to the point that your Premier sets up an inquiry to investigate a failed hotel quarantine management policy that HE introduced and after months he finally shows up unprepared and doesn’t know who introduced private security guards. And you still “stand with Dan”. And the worst performing state govt in this country probably ever.

Nobody does diversions better than Labor or the sycophantic media cheer squad.

It’s lucky I now subscribe to The Age so I can get some balance in what I read in the press.

Private security

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Don’t know why it has taken so long for the penny to drop, but just how ludicrous is this:

A senior Department of Jobs official has been shifted from their role as evidence mounts that the decision to use private security guards at Melbourne’s quarantine hotels was partly driven by a well-meaning attempt to provide jobs under “social inclusion” policies.

The phrase looked so innocuous. Private, I was thinking, as in from the private sector. The notion that that socialist nitwit would prefer to use security guards hired from the private sector is ZERO if not less. What a lying swindler he is, finding yet another way to help bankrupt the state. Meanwhile, how much do you believe this?

Mr Andrews told the official inquiry into the ill-fated hotels program on Friday he had no knowledge of how private security had been put in charge of guarding people.

Those words again.

Andrews fronts the Inquiry today

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News and Opinion | Herald Sun

Daniel will front the Inquiry today. The last opportunity to find someone, anyone, who knew what was going on. From Tim Smith from the Victorian Opposition (it does exist):

I don’t recall. No, those meeting notes with my name do not jog my memory. The decision to use security guards was already made, I don’t know by who. That was not my responsibility. I heard something about the ADF, but I don’t recall what.

Each senior figure speaking before the hotel quarantine inquiry should be made to read the transcript of their evidence and donate a considerable sum from their handsome taxpayer-funded salaries to the victims of this disaster for every time they used a version of those words.

Hundreds of Victorians have died. Thousands of businesses have collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of Victorians have lost their jobs.

The people entrusted to navigate Victoria through this pandemic steered it onto the rocks of the second wave — and are now they obfuscate, buck pass, dissemble and perhaps even lie under oath. It is a conga line of incompetence, insincerity and insensitivity. And it is a gross insult to the families who have lost loved ones because of them.

As for the virus, this is really where we are at.

Can we eliminate the virus? No.

Can we be sure that the death rate will never come back to its previous level? No.

Can we stay in lockdown forever? No.

Can we put an end to domestic travel forever? No

Can we put an end to international travel forever? No

Can we keep the productive parts of the economy subdued forever? No

So what are we going to do? At some stage, in spite of all of the uncertainties, even Daniel Andrews will have to open not just the economy but the whole of society up again, however much his totalitarian instincts may stand in the way.

Going to the comments section of the article by Chris Uhlmann on Daniel Andrews (see Call off the Covid Dogs) an article which was published online but not in the papers, these were some of the arguments of those who support the hard lockdowns and the approach taken by Andrews in Victoria. This is the link to the comments section of the article. You can also find the article at the link as well.

So easy to be wise after the event. If Victoria had just let it rip and many thousands died you would have been criticising the government for not doing enough.

When an existential threat appears, I want a leader who takes the cautious approach.

He seems to suggest that it is possible to ring fence aged care facilities. Chris Uhlmann makes it a choice between saving the lives of the elderly and saving the economy.

The only reason the death rate is as low as it is in this country is because we have taken extreme measures.

Until a vaccine is developed (if ever) quarantine and reduction of face to face contacts is the only effective method at the disposal of Governments to protect society.

The Victorian restrictions have been extreme and damaging. However it was the only acceptable response to suppress infection rates to a manageable level.

Chris is entitled to his opinion but he is no health expert, virologist, or scientist. Nor does he even quote or refer to any that might backup his view.

200,000 US deaths in 7 months indicates that this virus is a highly contagious killer. Aust could have had similar (per capita) stats if we didnt act as swiftly and as seriously as we did.

This is not an ordinary pandemic disease like influenza. When it gets any foothold at all, it does not advance incrementally, but exponentially.

The chief medical officers, most scientists and the WHO advises what we should do. The vast majority of leaders and intellectuals of the world advises what we should do. The politicians are listening and acting on said advises.

The ugly truth is we know that you and some other people either measure success in monetary terms or political terms, whilst you say that the elderly are affected you ignore that there is a growing after affect of Covid in younger people, chronic lung disease, heart damage and neurological damage, what does that do to the economy, how would massive chronic disease where people aren’t dead, but unable to conduct a full days work ever again, or wait and manage as we are.

What bizarre logic: using the success of lockdown in keeping cases/deaths low to argue that there should be no lockdown.

Let’s not just consider the death rates when asking was lockdown worth it. Let’s ask if we really want a large percentage of our community suffering from long term disabilities.

Our society has not been destroyed at all Mr Uhlmann, in fact it has been made stronger bar a few in the tin foil brigade.

Andrews has his constituency shrinking though it may be. There will be quite a post mortem on the psychology of the lockdowns and dealing with irrational fears which will come in company with the visiting of the phenomenal costs on the whole of Victorian society. Eventually, Andrews will be remembered as a reckless villain who brought so much destruction of virtually zero compensating gain. Here’s another cartoon that captures other aspects of the Victorian disaster.

Johannes Leak Letters Cartoon published on Wednesday September 9.

The political works of Gary Saul Morson

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We have previously drawn attention to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s New Criterion essay “How the great truth dawned,” Professor Morson’s New Criterion lecture “Leninthink,” Professor Morson’s New York Review of Books review “The horror, the horror,” and Professor Morson’s book Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Steve wrote about it here).

To these I now want to add Professor Morson’s First Things essay “Suicide of the liberals.”

His Wikipedia entry.

The Andrews virus

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News and Opinion | Herald Sun

What I found most remarkable about the cartoon was the implication that it is women in particular who find Daniel Andrews’ approach to dealing with the virus most appealing. As for the virus, this is really where we are at.

Can we eliminate the virus? No.

Can we be sure that the death rate will never come back to its previous level? No.

Can we stay in lockdown forever? No.

Can we put an end to domestic travel forever? No

Can we put an end to international travel forever? No

Can we keep the productive parts of the economy subdued forever? No

So what are we going to do? At some stage, in spite of all of the uncertainties, even Daniel Andrews will have to open not just the economy but the whole of society up again, however much his totalitarian instincts may stand in the way.

Going to the comments section of the article by Chris Uhlmann on Daniel Andrews, which was published online but not in the paper itself, these seem to be the arguments of those who support the hard lockdowns and the approach taken by Andrews in Victoria. This is the link to the comments section of the article. You can also find the article at the link as well.

So easy to be wise after the event. If Victoria had just let it rip and many thousands died you would have been criticising the government for not doing enough.

When an existential threat appears, I want a leader who takes the cautious approach.

He seems to suggest that it is possible to ring fence aged care facilities. Chris Uhlmann makes it a choice between saving the lives of the elderly and saving the economy.

The only reason the death rate is as low as it is in this country is because we have taken extreme measures.

Until a vaccine is developed (if ever) quarantine and reduction of face to face contacts is the only effective method at the disposal of Governments to protect society.

The Victorian restrictions have been extreme and damaging. However it was the only acceptable response to suppress infection rates to a manageable level.

Chris is entitled to his opinion but he is no health expert, virologist, or scientist. Nor does he even quote or refer to any that might backup his view.

200,000 US deaths in 7 months indicates that this virus is a highly contagious killer. Aust could have had similar (per capita) stats if we didnt act as swiftly and as seriously as we did.

This is not an ordinary pandemic disease like influenza. When it gets any foothold at all, it does not advance incrementally, but exponentially.

The chief medical officers, most scientists and the WHO advises what we should do. The vast majority of leaders and intellectuals of the world advises what we should do. The politicians are listening and acting on said advises.

The ugly truth is we know that you and some other people either measure success in monetary terms or political terms, whilst you say that the elderly are affected you ignore that there is a growing after affect of Covid in younger people, chronic lung disease, heart damage and neurological damage, what does that do to the economy, how would massive chronic disease where people aren’t dead, but unable to conduct a full days work ever again, or wait and manage as we are.

What bizarre logic: using the success of lockdown in keeping cases/deaths low to argue that there should be no lockdown.

Let’s not just consider the death rates when asking was lockdown worth it. Let’s ask if we really want a large percentage of our community suffering from long term disabilities.

Our society has not been destroyed at all Mr Uhlmann, in fact it has been made stronger bar a few in the tin foil brigade.

Andrews has his constituency shrinking though it may be. There will be quite a post mortem on the psychology of the lockdowns which will come in company with the visiting of the phenomenal costs on the whole of Victorian society. Eventually, Andrews will be remembered as a reckless villain who brought so much destruction of virtually zero compensating gain. Here’s another cartoon that captures other aspects of the Victorian disaster.

Johannes Leak Letters Cartoon published on Wednesday September 9.

Today is the eighth anniversary of this blog!!

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And this is the 5408th post since I began. Started just for fun, and still doing it just for fun. But from it wrote the first book ever published, so far as I know, that consists entirely of blog posts from a blog: The Art of the Impossible: A Blog History of the Election of Donald J Trump as President. Even more gripping to read now as we head into the re-election. The next book I might put together is a collection of posts of mine on Say’s Law. The blog, as I have noted before, was really a means to communicate with my children who, bless their hearts, still tolerate my writing, and dare I say it, even agree with me, at least some of the time, and perhaps even most of the time. Now lots more people come onto the site each day and I am really happy to see you all here. In the meantime, Hi Joshi.

Is there any part of the paper still safe to read anymore?

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It was only because I was doing the sudoku that I even came across this: Ricky Ponting says Black Lives Matter most important issue in society.

Ricky Ponting, captain of the Australian side during its greatest racial controversy, believes the Black Lives Matter movement is one of the most important issues facing society and one Australian cricket needs to engage with.

The comments come a week after Justin Langer acknowledged that the Australians should have put more thought into taking a knee before the games against England, but said they were discussing a more sustainable way of addressing the issue of racism in society and the game.

Here are the first of the comments listed under “Best”:

Before embracing BLM first check the official BLM website and them check out some of the speeches given by the founders and current leadership. Then see if you want to bend the knee. The BLM movement is much much more than respecting people of colour.

Ricky – your support on this issue is a disservice to sport in general.

Ricky Ponting should stick to cricket and leave political liberal progressive bull dust to clowns that got the time for that. BLM is a marxists organization and these sports people should educate themselves before they get involved in things they don’t understand.

It is about human rights, you dimwit

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He really is the most ignorant, not to mention outright stupid politician I have ever witnessed. A straight out Stalinist who knows only the logic of force. This is the essence of Andrews.

I’m always happy to have a debate but ultimately our policy will not be changing.

What he really said is that he is not in the slightest interested in having a debate, his mind has been made up and the personal freedoms of others have no meaning to him. More here: Daniel Andrews dismisses human rights complaint over Melbourne Covid curfew.

On Thursday, The Australian reported that Liberal Party MP Tim Wilson had written to the Human Rights Commission, urging it to examine the curfew on the basis that “citizens’ rights and freedoms [are] being limited based on the ease and efficiency of the powers of the state against the rights and freedoms of Victorians”.

Wilson has asked the commission, which he once headed, to examine whether it had grounds “to take action in light of the significant limitation on the rights and freedoms imposed on Victorians by the curfew for the ease of government interests”.

But Andrews dismissed that complaint on Friday, saying the curfew was “not about human rights. It is about human life.”

“That is my answer to Mr Wilson. And what he chooses to do with his time is a matter for him. Police need rules they can enforce,” Andrews said.

A complete disgrace. If he is remembered at all it will only be for the warning he has provided to future generations about the dangers of totalitarian evil that can easily seep in through the cracks in some Parliamentary socialist sewer.

And then, of course, there are the economic effects. This is from the PwC report to Melbourne City Council on Cost of Pandemic.

A vicious cycle of higher debt and lower growth has commenced. Higher debt means less control over events; a government facing debt pressures will be unable to use fiscal policies to the same extent. A reduced ability to service that debt will leave less for other services.

Federal government transfers represent 50% of Victorian government revenue. Transfers will fall as GST collections fall. With a dramatic fall in employment in the state, numbers in the Victorian public service must fall. It had employed 9.4% of the Victorian workforce but will increase to 12.4% in two years, an unsustainable level. State taxes will need to increase by prospectively 25%.

A downgrade in credit rating of Victorian debt is inevitable. Net debt will increase to 20% of GSP and net interest will exceed 6% of revenue. Interest rates on debt will increase as spreads widen. Victoria’s population will at best be static. If overseas students are hesitant to enrol with universities in Victoria, a declining population will emerge and there will be fewer taxpayers.

We’ll see how much the folks in Victoria will love Dan the Man then. What a reckless thoughtless incompetent fool.