Via
John Barrdear, Peter Martin relates a story of the different approaches
by Peter Costello and John Howard. The way the story is written Costello comes off as the dumb bureaucrat blind to political realities and consumed by graphs and other boring things like mathematics and budgets, and so forth.
However, in that little quip of a story Costello comes off better than either the Democrats or John Howard. Costello gives the Democrats a long discussion on budgets, cost effectiveness and what can be afforded. Costello is the empirical rationalist. However the reply from the Democrats is a political quip:
"At one point Costello said: Natasha, you don't appear to understand the numbers. To which she replied: I do understand the numbers Peter, you don't have them in the Senate and you won't be passing this bill"
So the Democrats were talking politics when Costello was talking mathematical and economic realities. Why would they be surprised when they get into Howard's office and he starts talking politics? Why would they be floored at all? They made a quip saying they didn't come to Costello to be convinced by empirical or rational arguments, they wanted a political solution; not an economic one. Why would they be surprised when Howard immediately talked politics with them?
I think it is a story to make the bureaucrat sound out of touch, when in reality there were political solutions being enforced and the political horse trading that is so often detested from politicians being made out as the noble, human and in-touch methodology. There has been a strong commitment to Australia getting its public debt under control, and it has been bureaucrats like Costello who actually understand numbers, economics and rational arguments; and more so, apply them over politics that have made a difference in that area.
By comparison the US has not, for instance Cheney's statement that "deficits don't matter", they do of course, economically they can be disastrous, Cheney was saying they don't matter politically.
For John Howard, his political ear led him to trash limited government, limited executive power, and even the public purse. Each new policy from him in the latter half of his time as Prime Minister was a political game to get re-elected. The "Children Overboard" affair, the Aboriginal intervention; with each new application of politics governance got worse and worse. However, during this period the power of the executive and national government continued to grow at the expense of a decentralised system. The same laws continue to be on the books.
Personally I prefer the dry economic rationalist who has empirical arguments rather than politics. I know politics are necessary, the position of least dissatisfaction is necessary to obviate violence and include as many political interest factions as possible, but a rational argument should be enough in most cases.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
