Jordan Peterson wimps out over toxic women

Bettina Arndt

Jordan Peterson is in Australia next week and I was thinking back to my long interview with him last year. At the time I considered taking him on about his reluctance to call out women’s bad behaviour  - which seems odd when he constantly tells men to pull themselves together. But since this was just after the Cathy Newman interview I realised that strategy was a really lousy idea.

When we did the interview I did make some pretty strong statements about women’s misbehaviour which in some areas seemed to make him a little braver. But he was still is very reluctant to sheet home women’s misdeeds.

I decided this week to put together a video about why men are so reluctant to criticise women – using my interviews with a number of prominent men to illustrate what’s going on here. I suggest that as an academic, Peterson is trained to avoid the wrath of the feminists who dominate his workplace.

Ditto Josh Zepps, who made a long podcast with me last year. Zepps is a great interviewer, happily exploring diverse ideas in his  wethepeople podcasts. But hs is a self-confessed “lefty”, works occasionally for the ABC and approached the interview with me clearly nervous of irritating his feminist friends. But I noticed I was able to embolden him by voicing strong criticisms of women’s duplicitous behaviour, which lead him to become positively brave by the end of the long interview.

Conservative men are equally reluctant to call out women’s bad behaviour but for different reasons. Here the problem is chivalry, old-fashioned adherence to the gynocentric ideal of women on a pedestal, whose virtue no gentleman would challenge. This form of benevolent sexism exploits men’s culturally-imposed desire to protect and show reverence for women. And that means they too wimp out when it comes to acknowledging that women can be very, very bad.

It proved a fascinating exercise pulling together my video showing how all this works. Here it is:



See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwhWlm7YwV8

Via email from Bettina -- bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Surly Bowen struggling with his misguided economic policies

He is determined to double-tax small investors

Well that’s cleared it up: Chris Bowen is not related to Gumby, that much-loved green plasticine man, but Bill Shorten is claiming Maggie Thatcher as a distant relative by telling us that he’s not for turning.

Labor’s treasury spokesman Bowen has had a bad six months. A number of his policy proposals are seriously misguided, while the timing now looks particularly unwise. Had he appreciated the extent to which the budget was improving by itself, he might have thought twice before embarking on such a high-risk strategy.

His response has taken the form of aggressive denial and surly petulance. Attack the government, attack those pointing out the errors of his ways, attack the voters.

This tactic reached a crescendo last week when he told retirees who would be adversely affected by the abolition of cash refunds for franking credits they could vote for the Coalition. What happened to governing for all Australians?

“The Liberals will run a scare campaign but their age of entitlement must end. This is the policy we will take to the election, it’s the right policy.” “Digging” and “keep” are words that spring to mind, particularly given Bowen has already tweaked the policy a number of times.

It’s a mystery as to why he has taken so many wrong turns when it comes to devising policy. Of course, he’s had to avoid the rookie error he made during the last election campaign when he announced a much larger cumulative budget deficit over the forward estimates — to the tune of $16.5 billion — than the Coalition.

He has therefore been forced to find additional revenue sooner rather than later. This in part explains the foolish proposal to eliminate cash refunds for franking credits, which will involve low-income earners facing higher rates of tax on share dividends than those earning more than $120,000 a year in taxable income.

This is surely not the Labor way. How can it be fairer to hit low-income earners harder than the better off? It’s Robin Hood in reverse with Bowen as the sheriff of Nottingham.

While trade unions, charities, not-for-profits and some age pensioners will be exempt from the policy, the elimination of cash ­refunds for franking credits will further distort the tax system and strengthen the incentives for older people to qualify for the Age Pension. There are reasons also to doubt the revenue projections — an additional $11.4 billion over the forward estimates and $55.7bn over a decade.

A number of companies have already started to distribute excess franking credits prior to the policy being implemented and fully franked shares will be traded so that the new owners are those who can gain maximum advantage of the franking credits. In other words, the projections of the additional revenue may be very optimistic indeed.

It’s worth recalling what Labor’s then Treasury spokesman Simon Crean had to say when prime minister John Howard first introduced these cash refunds in 2000: “It improves the current taxation system faced by low-­income investors, especially retired Australians.” It was an improvement then, but Labor ­believes it now must be jettisoned.

There has also been a lot of discussion about Labor’s proposals to abolish negative gearing — save for new housing — and the halving of the capital gains tax discount. It’s interesting to ponder what sort of brain-snap Bowen ­experienced when he accepted these proposals based on the flimsiest of analysis.

The scope to reduce personal income tax using negative gearing, particularly in respect of housing, is curtailed in a number of other countries. There are various ways this can be done, by limiting the number of properties or by capping the size of the allowable deductions, for instance. Why Labor didn’t start with more modest restrictions on negative gearing is anyone’s guess. And why extend the elimination of negative gearing to other assets, given that the seeming rationale of the policy is to improve housing affordability and to favour owner occupiers over investors?

Again, the answer would seem to be about the dollars. The more additional revenue raised, the more scope for money to be re­directed to Labor’s pet projects, particularly spending on the highly unionised education and hospital sectors. There is no real talk of using the additional revenue to seriously reform the tax system to improve equity and efficiency.

The timing of the negative gearing policy looks particularly ill-advised. Housing markets across most parts of the country are soft and the fall in house prices is accelerating at a record rate.

With question marks hanging over the apartment market and tight credit conditions, Bowen could not have picked a worse combination of factors when it comes to introducing a radical change to the taxation of investment.

Note that negative gearing has been part of the tax code for more than a century, with a very brief interruption under Bowen’s hero, former treasurer Paul Keating.

Again our modern-day sheriff of Nottingham is ushering in a policy that will continue to assist the well-heeled, with serious property investors able to deduct gearing and other costs against other investment income. Only mum-and-dad investors will be hit by the policy change.

When it comes to the change to the capital gains tax, this will place Australia at the very top of the international list in terms of the rate of this tax. In a world of global competition for capital, this seems a strange move.

Moreover, the grandfathering of the policy may well lead to an unfortunate lock-in of assets ­already held as well as a reluctance to invest in new ones.

A wildcard of the Labor tax package is the potential impact such a large additional tax burden has on overall economic conditions, which in turn could seriously undermine the rate of growth of revenue more generally. In fact, any serious reduction in the rate of economic growth would lead to a much greater fall-off in tax revenue than the gains associated with Labor’s individual measures.

We saw this effect around the time of the global financial crisis. In 2007-08, taxation added $279bn (or 23.7 per cent of GDP) billion to Treasury coffers. This amount fell sharply in the following years, with only $262bn (or 20.1 per cent of GDP) raised in 2009-10. Taxation as a percentage of GDP did not begin to rise again until 2011-12.

For Bowen, the timing of the release of the banking royal commission’s report yesterday is fortuitous. It will take the heat off him for the time being in terms of defending his largely indefensible tax-grab proposals and his refusal to play the role of Gumby.

SOURCE 






UN to be told: stop fighting Coal mine

Australia will formally reject the UN’s intervention over the Adani coalmine, accusing it of blindly accepting ­inaccurate claims of green activists and dismissing the majority support of indigenous landholders.

After lobbying by US law firm Earth Justice, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year publicly urged the Morrison government to suspend the Carmichael project as it had not been approved by “all native title claimants”.

Resources Minister Matt Cana­van yesterday said the Morrison government would write to the UN committee to formally correct the “clear errors” in its understanding of Australian law.

Senator Canavan said the UN had accepted incorrect claims that 2017 legislation enshrining majority rule within indigenous groups when considering land-use agreements was designed to undermine land rights.

He said the amendments, which followed the Federal Court’s McGlade ruling, had been widely backed by individual indigenous groups, the representative Native Title Council and Labor.

“They insinuated that these changes were effectively made to limit indigenous rights or somehow advantage this evil Adani project. This is just a massive misunderstanding of what happened,” Senator Canavan said.

“They were done after significant consultation with those groups and with the national ­Native Title Council.

“They helped protect over 200 indigenous land-use agreements which provide benefits to indigenous people which would have been put at risk without the agreements.”

The committee said it was “particularly concerned” by the 2017 law, derided by activists as the “Adani amendment”, to ­ensure indigenous land-use agreements needed only majority support among traditional owners. In Adani’s case, the indigenous land-use agreement with the Wangan and Jagalingou people was endorsed by 294 of 295 clan members in a 2016 ballot, after years of consultation with the ­Indian company.

Queensland’s Labor government is holding up the Adani project over the company’s plan to manage the area’s population of black-throated finches.

The government has received an independent review of the plan by environmental scientist Brendan Wintle, but last night missed Adani’s 5pm deadline to deliver the report.

Adani has accused the government of “shifting the goalposts” on its project, while the Liberal National Party said Labor was delaying the final go-ahead to prevent the issue becoming a distraction for Bill Shorten ahead of the federal election due in May.

Labor backed the native title amendment after a court judgment added a “high degree of uncertainty” by requiring votes approving land-use agreement to be carried unanimously.

Senator Canavan suggested the committee do its own ­research.

“International organisations seem to take as given claims made by vested interests in the big environmental movement,” he said.

The W&J Family Council — a minority group of traditional owners opposed to the mine — has criticised the legal change as an “Adani amendment” designed specifically to prop-up the “dodgy” land-use deal, which includes $250 million of economic opportunities.

However, traditional owners last week wrote to the UN insisting that the majority of clan members still supported the agreement with Adani.

SOURCE 






The silver lining

WHILE tears of despair are being shed in Townsville amid record flooding, home inundation and emergency rescues, it’s the opposite across other parts of the north.

Cloncurry recently set a record for the most consecutive days above 40C and is now washing off the heat with 388mm of rain.

Mayor Greg Campbell said the Cloncurry River was flowing and the Chinaman Creek Dam spilling over. “It is a great relief to the community. The old timers always say the only way to break a drought is with a flood,” he said. Cr Campbell said the rains fell “just in time”.

Elsewhere in what had been drought country, Mount Isa has recorded 232mm since the rains began late last week and the Gereta Station catchment, on the Leichhardt River, recorded 529mm, with 232mm in a single day.

Richmond welcomed more than 400mm and Mayor John Wharton said the graziers could not be happier.

“In the cattle industry, they say to wait until February until you panic so it’s just in time. We’re hoping in a couple of months we’ll have green fields and fat cattle.”

Food drops are feeding cattle stranded by floodwater, he said.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the rains were a relief for farmers who had struggled with the severe drought. “There were ... a few tears of happiness.”

It happens as the flooding emergency continues in Townsville, with more than 400 people were evacuated from the Townsville suburb of Idalia overnight.

Soldiers were today using every boat they could get their hands on to evacuate more Townsville residents amid fears up to 2000 properties may have been inundated, with emergency food and groceries to be trucked in this afternoon.

Authorities were this morning dealing with a fresh wave of calls from residents asking for help to leave their homes.

Residents were this morning being ferried to safety by helicopters as well as boats.

A total of 14,553 homes and businesses remain without power as of 3pm on Monday afternoon, as Ergon Energy warns residents about the dangers of generators running in their homes.

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here