Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Carbon Copies


Apparently there was an election in the United States last week and it didn't end well. Few things do, and sabbaticals never. But now, alas, the rod is stowed, the balls stashed and the merest glance at the backlog of reading by the front door suggests silliness has not abated in the least over the past week.

Why, what's this! In today's very own paper an unintended revelation, very much of the sort that once kept Kremlin watchers pasted to the pages of Pravda, where sometimes small truths could be divined amongst the official lines. We can thank Katharine Murphy, Phillip Coorey and the Fairfax press gallery's stenographic gifts for today's accidental insight into the way things really work with this government and its courtiers.

For reasons that almost certainly owe nothing to happenstance, both quality journalists chose the same day to wonder if Obama's triumph would prove a shot in the arm for our very own, pioneering, world-class GCT (Gillard's Carbon Tax or, as strong women prefer it, Girls Can Tax). Andrew Bolt has dismissed Murphy's essay on its facts, or lack thereof, but one is still left wondering where she found her addled inspiration.

Coorey's effort sheds at least a little light on this mystery, and possibly quite a lot. His prime topic is that things look grim for Tony Abbott because, after winning the next election, he will then have to win another after that. Toward the end of that profound insight he veers briefly off topic and into Murphy's territory, where he has this to say:
Obama, like other second-term presidents, is now free from having to run for re-election and will seek to leave a legacy. This could include reigniting the push to put a price on carbon. More so as it would raise huge amounts of revenue and could be sold as a deficit-reducing measure.
Murphy says almost the exact same thing and in very similar words:
There's speculation carbon pricing is back on the agenda in the US, either as a revenue raising measure (and God knows they need revenue), or as an Obamacare ''vision thing'' equivalent to rally the progressive base.
A coincidence, you might have assumed on any other day, great minds thinking alike and so forth. But Coorey goes on to suggest the source of both quality journalists' speculations, quoting "...a former Democrat adviser now living and working in Canberra, like other second-term presidents....."

Well who do you think that could be? A good bet, a very good bet, would Bruce Wolpe, former Fairfax publicist and, after that, a flack for Californian Democrat Henry Waxman. (Those who enjoy going through other people's desk drawers can find a statement of his personal US earnings here and record of known days worked).

One of those old school Kreminologists would make the connections in a moment. Returned to Australia and appointed in January as Gillard's ambassador to business, Wolpe has instructed the representatives of his party's official media mouthpiece what the commissars would like to see in the next day's opinion pages. Solid comrades both, each has obliged.

Let us hope that one day soon Wolpe's sense of mischief gets the better of him and, just for the fun of it, he orders up a bit of extra special publicity. An explanation in stereo of why surging tractor production is bad for Abbott would be well worth putting in the scrapbook.




12 comments:

  1. Professor, glad to see you're back. I hate to say it, but I am starting to genuinely think Gillard and co will win the next election. Hope the fish were complient...

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  2. As they used to say in Russia, there's no news in Izvestia, and no truth in Pravda. But, getting closer to the tractor or boot factory analogy, we were assured by someone on last night's ABC TV news that there had been an improvement, small though it be, in some aspect of homeless statistics. Closer examination may reveal no improvement overall, in fact further deterioration.
    But we are now in a world of impressionist politics, where policy stepping stones may turn out to be water lillies, despite continuing promises of a free dejeuner sur l'herbe. As the next election campaign gets rolling the Fauves will be in the ascendent, with ever more colourful splashes across the big picture.

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  3. Three tries to get those vague things right. They neednto be clearer.

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  4. The Old and Unimproved DaveNovember 13, 2012 at 6:59 AM

    You ask “Could Murphy and Coorey be Betty Farrelly’s long-ago abandoned children?”

    Fairfax journalists do not have mothers.

    Coorey was found under a small pile of lost files from Julia’s lawyering days.

    In Murphy’s case, an avian maternity courier brought her. Though word has it that the stork refused the gig, so they had to scrounge up a different species of fowl for the delivery to Fairfax...turns out that a goose walking around inside The Age editorial offices passes unremarked.

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  5. A carbon tax by any other name is still a con. A somewhat disconsolate American friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that Nobama got back in and what it would do their economy and the prospect of further taxation so I made his day and gave him a quote from John Marshall - "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy;
    because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear
    taxation." It is a message those of a conservative mind here should continually point out to those leaning towards the commissars.

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  6. ALP Pom-Pom Boy Coorey, pontificating on "deficit reducing measures", is probably just getting his eye in for his upcoming gig at the Australian Financial Review.

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  7. Obama will need lots of cash, heaps of it as he's blown $5 trillion already on nothing substantial. We all know that these socialists always run out of cash so why not put a tax on air?

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    1. A tax on air? Why not, we already have one!

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  8. No, real mischief would be to reveal that the official 12-month-plan predicts newspaper circulations will rise by 16 per cent after their recent temporary setback.

    Pedro of Adelaide

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  9. People getting stressed at the latest chapter of the narrative ie Abbott will somehow mysteriously lose the next election- rubbish.

    Also if you genuinely fear it, join the Liberal Party right now and start helping.

    Likewise, boycott the media and find your own news on the blogs.

    Don't support the narrative or the bolshie clownshoes who push it.

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  10. mojo, Unrepentant YankNovember 14, 2012 at 3:38 AM

    "...a flack for Californian Democrat Henry Waxman."

    Ah, he has experience serving the Corruptocracy.

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  11. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.November 14, 2012 at 10:49 AM

    According to The Monthly front page on the newstands (I can't bear to buy and read it) Julia Gillard is 'an honest woman'. In the sub-head we see it is, natch, a story about da dreadful sexism that abounds for luvvie ladies and wymmin everywhere as called out so very well by Gloriana Gillard.

    We can expect to see lots more of this drivel and other sorts of bleeding-heart vote-to-put-the-world-to-rights nonsense, much of it directed at women. As a sex, too many of us seem unaware of the Faustian bargain that is being struck with these leftie 'emancipists' who falsely claim to be doing women so much good. Like any poorly-founded relationship, it will all end in tears.

    I point this out to every woman I can.

    Keep writing Prof, with your time out breaks OK by us, but don't stop doing your very clever jabbing at the putrid underbelly of it all. You have been missed.





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