Utopia, you are standing in it!

What passes for political leadership in this country is engaged in a wind and solar-fuelled economic suicide mission. Subsidies to grid wrecking wind and solar (when soft loans, green schemes and taxpayer handouts are added) are pushing $5 billion a year, punishing households and businesses alike.

As wind and solar power capacity increases, power prices are rocketing out of control and major energy users are being chopped from the grid whenever the sun sets – killing solar – and sudden bursts of calm weather cause precipitous wind power output collapses.

And yet, Australia’s Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg continues to act as if nothing’s wrong. Gormless doesn’t cover it.

Exasperation and desperation are giving way to anger and fury. As Alan Moran details below.

Energy policy, price escalation and the destruction of industry competitiveness
Catallaxy Files
Alan Moran
8 June 2018

For some in Australia, the renewable rich UK electricity market…

Recently, my friend and colleague Victor Ray published a very interesting essay in Inside Higher Education. In it, he makes three claims about conservatives in academia:

1. Demands for intellectual diversity are not made in good faith.
2. Conservatives “dominate” higher education.
3. There is no diversity within conservative thinking.

I agree with #1 but I think #2 and #3 are simply incorrect. Let’s start with agreement: There are exceptions, of course, but many people who claim to represent conservative view points are not really interested in genuine engagement. Probably the most obvious case are the types of people who invite Milo Yiannopolous, Ann Coulter and other conservative “performance artists” who come to college campuses. They’re shock jocks, not real intellectuals.

But on the other points, Victor is not quite right. To be fair to Victor, let me quote him directly: “The second false premise that promoters of so-called diversity of thought…

According to The Sunday Times, shocking report shows that only four percent of robberies in England and Wales in 2017 were solved.  Only three percent of burglaries were solved. That is a dismal record and indicates that criminals can effectively act with impunity in victimizing citizens.

(From the film “Good Morning Vietnam”)

For years I showed the Robin Williams’ film “Good Morning Vietnam” to my history classes.  The movie reflected Williams’ genius, empathy, and commentary pertaining to a conflict that tore America apart.  I introduced the film because I wanted students to get a feel for a different aspect of the war which the character of Adrian Cronauer apply portrayed. Williams’ is also known for many other ground breaking and important films that include, “Dead Poets’ Society,” “Good Will Hunting,” “The Fisher King,” and the cartoon voiceover of “Áladdin,” along with a number that did not achieve recognition, but reflected Williams’ many talents.  Williams was a multifaceted individual whose onstage comedic insanity expressed a certain poignancy when one got passed the mask that the comedian presented to his audiences.  When he died in 2014 a cultural void was created which may never again be filled.  Williams…

Here is Jonathan Haidt, talking on globalism and nationalism and why they are incompatible. There are some real problems with global thinking, and Haidt exposes them, one by one. We get remarkably confused as to what human nature is all about, and shifting psychology and changing generations and just where we get off track. It’s an interesting talk. Just slightly over 10 minutes. Big audience. April, 2018.

Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His academic specialization is the psychology of morality and the moral emotions. Haidt is the author of two books: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006) and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012). He is also the founder of the Heterodox Academy to support viewpoint diversity in academia: https://heterodoxacademy.org/ In this talk from…

We’ve talked before about how the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has abandoned its historically useful mission, now taking after “hate speech” and including among the purveyors of said speech—on a list of “anti-Muslim extremists”—both Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Nawaz is a practicing Muslim, and Hirsi Ali a former Muslim and now a Muslim reformer whose latest book lays out a peaceful series of steps (granted, mostly impractical ones, like “getting people to stop taking the Qur’an literally”) to defuse Islamist extremism.

Nawaz threatened to sue the SPLC for labeling him as an anti-Muslim extremist. The SPLC then quietly removed its “field guide to anti-Muslim extremists” from its website, but now they’ve had to do more. Here’s a tweet from Nawaz’s foundation, Quilliam, detailing how the SPLC had to apologize and pay big bucks to settle the issue.

https://twitter.com/QuilliamOrg/status/1008722592432259072

Here is the SPLC’s statement, issued today, which I’ve interrupted…

As has been noted here on countless occasions in the past, the BBC regularly breaches its own editorial guidelines on impartiality through the use of a standard insert which tells readers of its reports that: “[t]he settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”

“Though that mantra has been repeated countless times over the years, it is not accompanied by a definitive cited source (because of course there isn’t one) and its claim is erroneously presented as being contested only by the government of Israel. In other words, the BBC’s standard formulation egregiously ignores the existence of legal opinions which contradict its own adopted narrative.”

Similarly, BBC audiences regularly see the phrases “occupied West Bank” and “occupied East Jerusalem” used in the corporation’s content and, as readers may know, it also refuses to call Jerusalem the capital city of Israel with its style guide stating:

“The…

For years visitors to the BBC News website have regularly come across claims concerning ‘international law’ in the corporation’s Israel-related content. For example:  

“The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”

Or:

“More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians claim for a future state.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”

As has been noted here in the past, that more or less standard insert does not include a definitive cited source underpinning the claim of illegality and no explanation is given regarding the legal basis for alternative opinions to the one promoted. The claim is erroneously presented as being contested solely by the government of Israel, thereby erasing from audience view the existence of additional legal opinions which contradict the BBC’s selected…

Reserve Bank of Australia conducted a conference in April 2018 titled : Central Bank Frameworks: Evolution or Revolution?

the central bank has uploaded the papers discussed in the conference and they look fairly interesting reading. There are seperate papers on Inflation targeting in Australia (which completed 25 years of IT), New Zealand (the pioneer) and Canada. Plus there are papers on mon pol committees and macropru policies.

It’s been a field day for  political  commentators, and  cartoonists,  as  Winston  Peters  fulfils a lifetime  dream  and steps  up to the  role of Prime Minister  (even if it  is only for  six  weeks).

And the country  awaits just which one of the  many  politicians who have inhabited  the frame of  Peters  over the best part of  40 years  will  emerge  into the spotlight.

Those who know him well — and there are not many in the media who do — reckon  he’ll be playing the   would-be statesman.

“Look  New Zealand, see what you’ve been  missing…” That’s  the  line  he  will want to  propagate. Forget the political bruiser, blur the memory of  the  past:  he  craves more than just a footnote in  political  history.

If he does  shine as  something of a statesman (a very  Kiwi one, it would be)  then there  might be  sudden  turnaround in the polls.

Dictating when and if power consumers get electricity was once the preserve of communist dictatorships (think the USSR, North Korea and Cuba).

Thanks to a maniacal obsession with intermittent wind and solar, Australia now sits comfortably in the same dismal ranks.

No longer can industrial users expect to have power according to their business plans – nowadays it’s all determined by the weather.

A couple weeks ago, big industry in New South Wales got a taste of what’s been dished up for years in wind and solar ‘powered’ South Australia, when the grid manager shut off power to its Tomago aluminium smelter.

The alternative was to watch the entire grid go black, as wind and solar output collapsed across NSW on 7 and 8 June:

RE promoters desperately tried to pin the blame on NSW’s coal-fired power plants, wildly claiming that they had ‘failed’.

A number of plants weren’t delivering…