Guest post by “Ollie Stakes”
The biggest story of the past six months or so has been the economic crisis currently shaking the world. And, as with everything, professional moron Andrew Bolt sees this through a black-and-white, red-versus-blue prism. In this case, Bolt has opposed pretty much every effort our Prime Minister has undertaken to solve this crisis due to ideological rather than economic reasons.
A few weeks ago, Bolt wrote that-
“…the Government’s big spending and interventions suggest we may also slide into a soft no-losers socialism we could regret,”
because the Rudd Government dared to intervene in the economy in a time of crisis (which is fairly basic Keynesian theory, so basic even I understood it). Because it could lead to “no-losers socialism”, and might make people think that maybe an extreme free market isn’t the best idea. Bolt doesn’t oppose these measures due to his masterful grasp of economics- he opposes it because of his bizarre worldview, in which any government intervention in the market, no matter the circumstance, is Evil Socialism and means we will shortly turn into a second USSR. Funnily enough, I can’t recall him saying anything of the sort with regards to George W. when the latter created a $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street.
“The Prime Minister’s $149 million “rescue’’ of Holden this week revealed Rudd at his farcical worst.
First, he announced Holden would get $149 million from his “green car’’ fund—and another $30 million from the South Australian Government—to build a new “green’’ car in Elizabeth.
… Except on the very day you read of Rudd’s $149 million to build more Holdens and save jobs, you also read this about his desperate search for cash: “Lucrative tax breaks for motor vehicles face the Budget axe and thousands of federal public service jobs could be slashed as the Rudd Government goes on a savings rampage’’.
Bolt doesn’t mention that the tax breaks are only for company cars, rather than motor vehicles in general. Basically, the government pays you to use a car in the morning to get to work, rather than using, say, public transport. Whereas the Holden rescue plan is necessary to preserve jobs that are vital to the Australian economy, and it means that we’ll have a viable auto industry in the future- other countries are going to want to buy green cars as well.
With regards to the cuts in federal public service jobs, which are under consideration to pay for the proposed plan to use federal money to combat homelessness-
Should we assume that Bolt objected to Jeff Kennett when, as Premier of Victoria, he drastically slashed state public service jobs in order to solve economic malaise? Of course not. Why? Because Kennett was a Liberal, and therefore not of “the Left” (yes, Bolt honestly thinks Rudd is some kind of Maoist radical). The fact is that saving the auto industry and providing it with a viable future, which means green cars, is more important to the Australian economy than the jobs of these public servants.
The rest of the article is Bolt objecting to Rudd daring to spend money to solve the financial crisis, which of course is a stupid thing to say. Does Bolt offer an alternative? Nope. He just really hates Rudd for beating his Dear Leader, John Winston Howard.
Like most on the political Right, Bolt naively believes in a free market utopia, kind of like the neo-con version of the Left’s much-mocked socialist utopia, except far more dangerous. It is now obvious that free market extremism got us into this mess in the first place, yet here Bolt is saying that we should continue on with it merrily and do nothing to prevent a recession here at home.
And you know what the kicker is? Who wants to bet Bolt would be saying the same things if (God forbid) Howard had been re-elected last year and pursued the same policies as Rudd? I’d be willing to bet that he’d support them, and babble on about Howard’s much-vaunted (and non-existent) “good economic management” like the partisan tribalist he is.
Happy holidays, everyone.
14 Comments
26 December, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Sounds about right…
26 December, 2008 at 9:21 pm
It must be killing Bolty to see the cold dead hand of international communism reach from the grave and take control of his friend George W.
27 December, 2008 at 7:44 am
In dolt world it’s free market except when it comes to private health care and private schools and possibly nuclear power.
And hey I went to a private school so you can’t call me ‘elitist’!
27 December, 2008 at 8:07 am
andy is an idealogical warrior first and foremost. that’s why there was no criticism of GWB when his administration overrode teh vote of the senate to bailout the car industry there. it’s why there was no criticism when howard pledged intervention to protect loggers jobs in tasmania 4 years ago. but with rudd all he sees is labor = evil.
this is one of the reasons why andy can never be a journalist. journalists and reporters especially good ones, are able to be even handed in their reporting, critical of both sides and able to set aside their own idealogy in forming an opinon. andy has shown that he is incapable of doing that. he will only criticise the liberals when they do something that opposes his world view, such as support the stolen generations apology, or support for emissions trading. he is just a hack and a hackneyed one at that.
28 December, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I love Phillip Adams’ coining of “USSA”. Of course, Bolt had no need to criticise Bush’s financial bailout plan, because it was done to support the free market, not to replace it. Rudd, by contrast, is merely pursuing Labor’s “socialist objective”, which was only removed from the party’s constitution 20+ years ago for cosmetic reasons.
29 December, 2008 at 7:29 am
Exactly how does someone on the “left” come around to the point of view that “what’s good for General Motors is good for Australia”?
29 December, 2008 at 11:15 am
To be fair to Captain Rule-of-Ten he wasn’t very ideological during the Kennett years (not that his ideology these days is a great improvement on his time as the Hun’s resident mini-paulkelly centrist.)
“Exactly how does someone on the “left” come around to the point of view that “what’s good for General Motors is good for Australia”?”
Umm, see, there’s these traditions in Australia of things called the ‘Industrial Left’ and ‘The Next Snowy Mountain Scheme’ being really popular with us bleeding hearts. I don’t know if Ollie is a Green or an ALP supporter, but most progressives who read blogs like this still have a sentimental attachment to bulding things like cars in this country (even if it’s long meant the profits leave these shores).
You don’t get to just _imagine_ the values of you opponents into being.
In fact it’s the ‘traditionalist’ Bolt who’s going against his self-styled heritage by implying our blokey nation doesn’t have to make cars, regardless of whether they be V8s or hybrids.
(Personally I think Bolt fancies his audience have the values of Wall Street Journal readers on this particular issue. Hey Andy, if you want your sheeple to be free-market purists about Holden, then perhaps you shouldn’t stoke their Hansonism with 3/4 of what you write.)
29 December, 2008 at 11:20 am
Heh, I imagined I’d written “you don’t get to just _imagine_ the values of your opponents”
29 December, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Great post Ollie! Please write again soon.
29 December, 2008 at 11:07 pm
This is the same Andrew Bolt who tried to excuse Gerry Harvey’s disgusting comments about how homeless and low income people don’t deserve charity because they are no-hopers who don’t deserve to live, is it not?
It’s very easy for Bolt to criticise while he has his high salary and safe job. Holden workers don’t have that luxury. Unlike Bolt, they don’t get the opportunity to complain about everything because they are too busy working their guts out to feed their families and pay their bills whilst thinking they could be sacked anytime.
I’ve said it before but Andrew Bolt and his lemmings are NOT conservatives, they are hard core rightists. Us real conservatives DON’T think like Bolt.
30 December, 2008 at 12:38 am
The original snowy mountain scheme was a government enterprise that created a public good and was central to the integration of postwar immigrants into Australian life. The Rudd plan is a corporate handout. It only gets past the exhausted bullshit-detectors of the electorate because of the prevailing “sentimental attachment to building things like cars,” which has been carefully cultivated by decades of previous handouts for the auto industry, all of which similarly promised that they were creating a “viable industry for the future.” They never specify whether that means “not dependent on constant bailouts.” Why do people suspend their natural disgust at this kind of corporatism whenever the corporate partner can issue some cheap talk about the environment? And does anyone seriously think Australia will be any more competitive in the hybrid-making market than it is in any other facet of the auto industry, which is not at all?
30 December, 2008 at 2:05 pm
“The Rudd plan is a corporate handout… does anyone seriously think Australia will be any more competitive in the hybrid-making market than it is in any other facet of the auto industry, which is not at all?”
That’s a cogent argument, Dave, yet it’s not one Bolt can actually bring himself to make. You’re confusing him with the likes of Peter Walsh if you think he’s expressing support for a ’sink-or-swim’ industry policy–he doesn’t even have the balls to explicitly criticise the corporations in the article Ollie linked to. In fact, apart from one sentence about consumer demand for Australian-built vehicles in this country, Bolt’s article is almost entirely concerned with his opinion of the linkage between taxpayer subsidies and job/environmental policy.
There’s nowt there about microeconomic policy or the evils of interventionism or corporatism.
Because the columnist we’re talking about is not a policy wonk–he’s a partisan hack with _very_ flexible big government conservative beliefs.
7 January, 2009 at 11:12 am
Well done Ollie – I asked in Bolt’s column if he had a salary sacrificed car. I haven’t bothered to check if the post made it up.
23 January, 2009 at 3:31 pm
“It is now obvious that free market extremism got us into this mess in the first place” – err… wasn’t it government intervention during the Clinton era that encouraged Fanny and Freddie to loan to low income individuals in order to boost housing? How is that the fault of free markets? If anything, this mess shows that big government is the problem, free markets work.
Comments are closed.