Heard this on the radio this morning and thought it was worth passing on:
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.
He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Aspirin, sun lotion, or a sticky plaster to a student; but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar can sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.
He is survived by three stepbrothers; I Know my Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I'm a Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.
can't find any authorship details
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
... and the band played on (badly, but no better or worse than anyone else)
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.
“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.
"If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.
But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said,
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
---------------------
Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
h/t to SJA
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.
“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.
"If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.
But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said,
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
---------------------
Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
h/t to SJA
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Australia's Deadly Dozen
While roaming around the internets tonight I came across a photo gallery of Australia's Deadly Dozen (13 in all). One of the prettiest is ...
Check out the others at the link.
The Blue Ringed Octopus
Check out the others at the link.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Say what???
There's been a big stink here over Pacific Brands laying off 1850 workers after giving the directors big pay rises. Apparently lots of people are calling for the Government to "do something", e.g. ...
Pay umpire should rein in CEOs: Greens
THE Rudd government's new industrial umpire should be given the power to curb excessive executive salaries, the Greens say.
Greens Leader Bob Brown says they will look to amend the Fair Work bill currently before parliament in an effort to rein in fat cats' pay.
"Under the Greens' proposal, the Fair Work Australia commission would review executive salaries before ordinary workers are made redundant,'' Senator Brown said.
"The commission would require a company to explain why high executive salaries should not be lopped in preference to jobs.''
Senator Brown said the Greens were receiving legal advice on whether the corporations power of the constitution could be used to empower Fair Work Australia to regulate companies' internal affairs.
The new umpire will replace the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, the Fair Pay Commission and the Workplace Authority from the beginning of next year.
The Greens push comes after it was revealed 13 directors of the Bonds clothing manufacturer Pacific Brands gave themselves massive pay rises in 2008 before sacking 1850 workers.
There was more outrage on Friday in response to reports outgoing Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo will walk away with a $3 million pay bonus.
-------
Umm, WHAT? How can the Government regulate a public company? How can they regulate whether or not a company makes people redundant?
This is all too "flashback to Atlas Shrugged" for me!
Pay umpire should rein in CEOs: Greens
THE Rudd government's new industrial umpire should be given the power to curb excessive executive salaries, the Greens say.
Greens Leader Bob Brown says they will look to amend the Fair Work bill currently before parliament in an effort to rein in fat cats' pay.
"Under the Greens' proposal, the Fair Work Australia commission would review executive salaries before ordinary workers are made redundant,'' Senator Brown said.
"The commission would require a company to explain why high executive salaries should not be lopped in preference to jobs.''
Senator Brown said the Greens were receiving legal advice on whether the corporations power of the constitution could be used to empower Fair Work Australia to regulate companies' internal affairs.
The new umpire will replace the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, the Fair Pay Commission and the Workplace Authority from the beginning of next year.
The Greens push comes after it was revealed 13 directors of the Bonds clothing manufacturer Pacific Brands gave themselves massive pay rises in 2008 before sacking 1850 workers.
There was more outrage on Friday in response to reports outgoing Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo will walk away with a $3 million pay bonus.
-------
Umm, WHAT? How can the Government regulate a public company? How can they regulate whether or not a company makes people redundant?
This is all too "flashback to Atlas Shrugged" for me!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Money for nothing creates fools' paradise
from http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25104649-5007146,00.html
Money for nothing creates fools' paradise
By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, February 25, 2009 12:01am
NEVER have we handed so much free money to the reckless, careless, brainless and plain lazy.
Not good at all. Rewarding fools risks making us all dumber.
Go through just the recent handouts.
Don't work? Poor because you gamble or drink? Never bothered saving in your life?
Here, have a $1000 "stimulus" cheque from the Rudd Government's $10.4 billion bag of December handouts. Oh, and there's another $900 coming to you in a fresh round of handouts, in case you've already splurged the last lot.
Didn't bother insulating your house? Here, let the Government spend another $4 billion doing that for you, too, and for free. Free to you, that is.
Didn't insure your house or contents, now burned in Victoria's fires, and thus skipped the 20 per cent insurance levy for the fire services that tried to save you?
Never mind! A quarter of the burned out did the same, so have $10,000 from the Bushfire Appeal Fund as downpayment for a new place.
Would rather go to work than look after your toddlers? Let the Government give you an even bigger childcare subsidy, ripped off the parents who raise their own.
Roll up, roll up, roll up, all you who never studied, never put your head down, never saved, never dared, never thought for yourself and never sweated.
We have free cash for you all, extracted from the wallets of the people who did.
Oh, stop frothing. Yes, I know that most of the poor are virtuous, not drunks or pokie addicts.
I know that for many it's not their fault they're not rich - and even to their credit, since they chose to serve as priests, teachers, nurses or police.
Yes, I also know we are healthier when the rich help the poor, and that the burned-out deserve our compassion, whether they were insured or not, which is why I've donated plenty.
But even deserved charity has its price, and the price of all this free money may be an infantilising of a people once famous for their self-reliance. And a rewarding of precisely the behaviours that drove people to need help in the first place.
We don't like to say such things aloud for fear of seeming too hard on poorer Australians who are usually excused as "disadvantaged" - as if they were just unlucky, and held back by forces beyond their control. You know, by society. Or bastard bosses.
And we're all in the game of treating the rich as plain "lucky" - or even selfish. Not like "real Australians".
Most of us secretly know all this is nonsense. Ours is a society where most people of average intelligence or better can succeed, at least financially, by doing stuff so obvious that it's a cliche - studying hard and working harder.
And even leaders of the Left know that what most holds back the poor is not bad bosses or a rotten society, but bad choices, reinforced by bad parenting or other cultures of failure.
That is why, for instance, Labor is as keen as I am on early intervention programs to catch children while they are still young enough to learn what Nobel laureate Prof James Heckman identified as keys to getting ahead -- motivation, self-control, far-sightedness and the need not to splurge today what you'll need tomorrow.
It's also why the poor tend to stay poor, even after their handout. It's why the poor are also most likely - as the surveys show - to be fat, smokers, or the kind of parents who don't speak enough to their children, or nicely enough, either.
It's also why Aborigines in semi-tribal cultures can never hope to have the riches that are actually produced by middle-class "white" ways.
BAD habits of mind hold people back most, and encouraging those bad habits with free money - no matter how virtuous the motive -- can hurt more than help.
So how much will we pay for the free money we now see being dumped by the truckload? Let's study a few clues.
The Rudd Government's "stimulus" handouts went not just to the virtuous poor, but to people made poor by gambling, drinking and never saving -- people who were then told to spend their windfall rather than save it.
And spend they did, in ways that explained exactly how they qualified for the help in the first place.
News item: "NSW punters gambled an extra $500 million last month, prompting claims the Federal Government's economic stimulus went into poker machines."
News item: "Broome police say the Federal Government's new one-off welfare payments are being used by alcoholics to pay $170 for a carton of beer in Kimberley communities."
This free cash to the feckless can't be healthy in a country where already we have middle class parents demanding the rest of us pay for their child care. Where any Australian who breaks laws overseas screams for our (free) help. Where we now import South Pacific fruitpickers rather than make our own unemployed work for their dole.
It can't be healthy when every week brings yet more examples of people now demanding as their right the help for which they should be grateful, even astonished.
News item -- an ABC interview with a fire victim offered the free use of a house: "They've said to me there's a house available in Nagambie, would you go to Nagambie? I said no, I have nothing for me in Nagambie . . . They don't care what they do with you."
In fact, each week also brings more examples of people demanding as a right the kind of help some should never have needed at all.
News item - interview with a Sydney mother of children charged with gang violence: "The mother of 15 . . . said she and her youngest children were hiding out, too afraid to go back to their Rosemeadow home because of threats made to her safety. She said the Department of Housing had failed to find her emergency accommodation so that she and her family could escape the violence . . ."
Give these "disadvantaged" people more free money. Free money for more public housing to escape the violence their children helped cause. Free money for not working hard. Free money for each of the children they can't support. Free money none of them earned.
AND do it while we feed this poor-you myth that those who pay for all this free money are the real bludgers, the real embarrassments with their success, their educated accents and that too-prissy prudence.
News item - letter to The Age: "Will all (bushfire-affected) families receive the same dollar-value assistance from money donated by the public, with (the insured) potentially making a profit after their insurance claims are paid? Surely not."
(Surely yes, in fact, which is one small mercy.)
News item - ABC-TV interviews an unemployed single mother and long-time drug addict about her six children - one disabled - now being raised by a lawyer: "The two older girls . . . come across to me as a little bit stuck up. I don't know whether it's from the (private) school that they go to or what it is . . . They don't want to come home, so the Department of Community Services have actually ruined my life by taking all of my kids."
Hey, give that woman free money, too. She's "disadvantaged", right? And not a bit stuck up.
There you go, darl. The least you deserve. And the good news is, there's more coming from where that last lot came, so spend like there's no future.
---------------------
Wow, how did that get past the editors?
Money for nothing creates fools' paradise
By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, February 25, 2009 12:01am
NEVER have we handed so much free money to the reckless, careless, brainless and plain lazy.
Not good at all. Rewarding fools risks making us all dumber.
Go through just the recent handouts.
Don't work? Poor because you gamble or drink? Never bothered saving in your life?
Here, have a $1000 "stimulus" cheque from the Rudd Government's $10.4 billion bag of December handouts. Oh, and there's another $900 coming to you in a fresh round of handouts, in case you've already splurged the last lot.
Didn't bother insulating your house? Here, let the Government spend another $4 billion doing that for you, too, and for free. Free to you, that is.
Didn't insure your house or contents, now burned in Victoria's fires, and thus skipped the 20 per cent insurance levy for the fire services that tried to save you?
Never mind! A quarter of the burned out did the same, so have $10,000 from the Bushfire Appeal Fund as downpayment for a new place.
Would rather go to work than look after your toddlers? Let the Government give you an even bigger childcare subsidy, ripped off the parents who raise their own.
Roll up, roll up, roll up, all you who never studied, never put your head down, never saved, never dared, never thought for yourself and never sweated.
We have free cash for you all, extracted from the wallets of the people who did.
Oh, stop frothing. Yes, I know that most of the poor are virtuous, not drunks or pokie addicts.
I know that for many it's not their fault they're not rich - and even to their credit, since they chose to serve as priests, teachers, nurses or police.
Yes, I also know we are healthier when the rich help the poor, and that the burned-out deserve our compassion, whether they were insured or not, which is why I've donated plenty.
But even deserved charity has its price, and the price of all this free money may be an infantilising of a people once famous for their self-reliance. And a rewarding of precisely the behaviours that drove people to need help in the first place.
We don't like to say such things aloud for fear of seeming too hard on poorer Australians who are usually excused as "disadvantaged" - as if they were just unlucky, and held back by forces beyond their control. You know, by society. Or bastard bosses.
And we're all in the game of treating the rich as plain "lucky" - or even selfish. Not like "real Australians".
Most of us secretly know all this is nonsense. Ours is a society where most people of average intelligence or better can succeed, at least financially, by doing stuff so obvious that it's a cliche - studying hard and working harder.
And even leaders of the Left know that what most holds back the poor is not bad bosses or a rotten society, but bad choices, reinforced by bad parenting or other cultures of failure.
That is why, for instance, Labor is as keen as I am on early intervention programs to catch children while they are still young enough to learn what Nobel laureate Prof James Heckman identified as keys to getting ahead -- motivation, self-control, far-sightedness and the need not to splurge today what you'll need tomorrow.
It's also why the poor tend to stay poor, even after their handout. It's why the poor are also most likely - as the surveys show - to be fat, smokers, or the kind of parents who don't speak enough to their children, or nicely enough, either.
It's also why Aborigines in semi-tribal cultures can never hope to have the riches that are actually produced by middle-class "white" ways.
BAD habits of mind hold people back most, and encouraging those bad habits with free money - no matter how virtuous the motive -- can hurt more than help.
So how much will we pay for the free money we now see being dumped by the truckload? Let's study a few clues.
The Rudd Government's "stimulus" handouts went not just to the virtuous poor, but to people made poor by gambling, drinking and never saving -- people who were then told to spend their windfall rather than save it.
And spend they did, in ways that explained exactly how they qualified for the help in the first place.
News item: "NSW punters gambled an extra $500 million last month, prompting claims the Federal Government's economic stimulus went into poker machines."
News item: "Broome police say the Federal Government's new one-off welfare payments are being used by alcoholics to pay $170 for a carton of beer in Kimberley communities."
This free cash to the feckless can't be healthy in a country where already we have middle class parents demanding the rest of us pay for their child care. Where any Australian who breaks laws overseas screams for our (free) help. Where we now import South Pacific fruitpickers rather than make our own unemployed work for their dole.
It can't be healthy when every week brings yet more examples of people now demanding as their right the help for which they should be grateful, even astonished.
News item -- an ABC interview with a fire victim offered the free use of a house: "They've said to me there's a house available in Nagambie, would you go to Nagambie? I said no, I have nothing for me in Nagambie . . . They don't care what they do with you."
In fact, each week also brings more examples of people demanding as a right the kind of help some should never have needed at all.
News item - interview with a Sydney mother of children charged with gang violence: "The mother of 15 . . . said she and her youngest children were hiding out, too afraid to go back to their Rosemeadow home because of threats made to her safety. She said the Department of Housing had failed to find her emergency accommodation so that she and her family could escape the violence . . ."
Give these "disadvantaged" people more free money. Free money for more public housing to escape the violence their children helped cause. Free money for not working hard. Free money for each of the children they can't support. Free money none of them earned.
AND do it while we feed this poor-you myth that those who pay for all this free money are the real bludgers, the real embarrassments with their success, their educated accents and that too-prissy prudence.
News item - letter to The Age: "Will all (bushfire-affected) families receive the same dollar-value assistance from money donated by the public, with (the insured) potentially making a profit after their insurance claims are paid? Surely not."
(Surely yes, in fact, which is one small mercy.)
News item - ABC-TV interviews an unemployed single mother and long-time drug addict about her six children - one disabled - now being raised by a lawyer: "The two older girls . . . come across to me as a little bit stuck up. I don't know whether it's from the (private) school that they go to or what it is . . . They don't want to come home, so the Department of Community Services have actually ruined my life by taking all of my kids."
Hey, give that woman free money, too. She's "disadvantaged", right? And not a bit stuck up.
There you go, darl. The least you deserve. And the good news is, there's more coming from where that last lot came, so spend like there's no future.
---------------------
Wow, how did that get past the editors?
Best "Out of Office" Automatic e-mail Replies
· I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.
· You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.
· Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor's having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.
· I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
· Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.
· The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)
· Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.
· Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.
· I've run away to join a different circus.
· I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Loretta' instead of 'Bob'
------------------
My favourite is the second last one :)
· You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.
· Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor's having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.
· I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
· Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.
· The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)
· Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.
· Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.
· I've run away to join a different circus.
· I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Loretta' instead of 'Bob'
------------------
My favourite is the second last one :)
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