MONEY BUYS BABIES

In my comments on abortion prevention, I have long advocated lump-sum payments for mothers. Australia is actually doing it, though the payments are in my view still to low. Even so, the policy seems to be having some effect:

"The Federal Government's $3000 baby bonus has helped to reverse the nation's declining birth rate, with new statistics revealing an increase for the first time in a decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of babies per woman rose to 1.77 last year, breaking a forty year decline, it was reported. The birth rate is the highest it has reached in seven years and is the first time it has increased significantly since 1961 when it peaked at 3.55. The Howard Government's $3000 baby bonus for every baby born in 2004 played a significant role in halting the nation's declining fertility rate, the Australian National University's head of demography, professor Peter McDonald said. Prof McDonald predicted the fertility rate would rise to 1.8 in 2005 as the baby bonus starts having an effect. The bonus will increase to $4000 from July 1 this year".

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I think the jury decided rightly in the Michael Jackson case. There was such as stench of corruption surrounding many of his accusers that his guilt of anything could never have been seen as beyond reasonable doubt. It's not yet a crime to be weird.

Good news from China: "A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government. The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest"

Steyn on China: "I said a while back that China was a better bet for the future than Russia or the European Union. Which is damning with faint praise: trapped in a demographic death spiral, Russia and Europe have no future at all. But that doesn't mean China will bestride the scene as a geopolitical colossus. When European analysts coo about a "Chinese century", all they mean is "Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century". But wishing won't make it so. China won't advance to the First World with its present borders intact. In a billion-strong state with an 80 per cent rural population cut off from the coastal boom and prevented from participating in it, "One country, two systems" will lead to two or three countries, three or four systems. The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way. Anti-Americans betting on Beijing will find the China shop is in the end mostly a lot of bull."

Some VERY interesting history from one who was there: "Before Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade in February 1950, he had not been particularly associated with the right wing of the Republican Party; on the contrary, his record was liberal and centrist, statist rather than libertarian. Furthermore, Red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunting were originally launched by liberals, and even after McCarthy the liberals were the most effective at this game. It was, after all, the liberal Roosevelt Administration which passed the Smith Act, first used against Trotskyites and isolationists during World War II and then against communists after the war; it was the liberal Truman Administration that instituted loyalty checks; it was the eminently liberal Hubert Humphrey who was a sponsor of the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives.""

Liberty before democracy?: "Concentrating on liberty involves a shift of rhetoric and a change of emphasis in practice. The focus of both, particularly in the wider Middle East, should be on the array of diplomatic and developmental means at our disposal to expand the range of individual rights, particularly liberty of thought and discussion; extending the rule of law; fostering religious toleration; and insuring equality of opportunity for women in politics and in the market place. Proponents of democracy promotion should not be disappointed or alarmed. One advantage to putting the spread of liberty abroad first in the here-and-now is the long-term gains it promises in promoting democracy around the globe".

A nation of assimilated immigrants: "To say America is a nation of immigrants is like saying the sky is blue. It's both true and irrelevant. Every nation is a nation of immigrants; people have been migrating across the globe ever since we left Africa. Nor did the thirteen largely English colonies mean to establish a nation of immigrants. Many did not welcome America's first large Catholic influx in the 1840s, and Emma Lazarus's poem ('Give me your tired ...') did not grace Lady Liberty until 1903. More importantly, to say we are a nation of immigrants is an incomplete truth. A fuller truth is that we are a nation of immigrants who assimilated -- who learned English, did not rely (through most of our history) on government safety nets, and sought to 'become Americans' (a once-popular phrase)."

Sowell on social class immobility: "If this is a class-ridden society denying "access" to upward mobility to those at the bottom, how can immigrants come here at the bottom and rise to the top? One obvious reason is many poor immigrants come here with very different ambitions and values from poor Americans born into our welfare state and imbued with notions and attitudes of dependency and resentment of the success of others. The fundamental reason many do not rise is not class barriers but failure to develop the skills, values and attitudes that cause people to rise. The liberal welfare state means they don't have to, and liberal multiculturalism says they don't need to change their values because one culture is as good as another. Liberalism is not part of the solution but part of the problem. Racism is supposed to put insuperable barriers in the path of nonwhites anyway, so why knock yourself out trying? This is another deadly message, especially for the young. But if immigrants from Korea or India, Vietnamese refugees, and others can come here and move right up the ladder, despite not being white, why are black and white Americans at the bottom more likely to stay there?

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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