What Australia needs is a "genuine grassroots free market advocacy organisaiton 1", writes Tim Andrews. And he’s convinced he’s the man to make it happen.
Andrews is currently in the US equipping himself with the training and experience he’ll need to create an Australian small-government movement. And to get things rolling he’s taking part in the Koch Associate Program a "for professionals who are passionate about free-market ideas, and want to become more effective at advancing liberty throughout their careers." As Tim explains:
… whilst many don’t know the name Koch, it is not only the largest private company in the world (revenue exceeding $100 billion USD a year), it also funds pretty much the entire small government movement.
That’s not much of an exaggeration. The Koch Brothers, David and Charles, have donated millions of dollars to libertarian causes. Forbes calls them "The secret billionaires behind the politics machine" and it’s common, even in libertarian circles, to refer to the Koch-funded network as the ‘Kochtopus‘.
In a piece for the New Yorker, Jane Mayer writes: "The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation." (Koch Industries disputes many of the claims in Mayer’s article.)
Mayer claims that the Kochs are helping bankroll the Tea Party movement through organisations like the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. She describes one of the organisation’s events as a "a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas."
Tim is also working for Grover Norquist‘s small-government advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform. He refers to Norquist as a “Conservative Guru” and writes that his ambition is to set up an Australian organisation that’s an "amalgam of Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform."
Norquist is enthusiastic about the Tea Party movement and, according to a piece he wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free , has spoken "at rallies in Washington, Pittsburgh and North Dakota".
Tim not only has the training and experience he needs to set up a grassroots movement for patriotic Australians who want to pay less tax, he’s also made an important personal commitment:
… I have the fortune of having won that roulette of lottery that is US citizenship, and have taken advantage of it. This, more than anything else, I cannot overstress the value of. Unless you have been here, no-one can actually understand the difference that living in the US makes. The fact that I am immersed in the core of the future of free market advocacy, means that I will have unparalleled skills necessary to be able to do this back in Australia. And these skills are impossible to pick up at home.
I have no doubt whatsoever that we need to set up a free market grassroots advocacy group in Australia. I have no doubt that this is essential if we want to prosper as a society and not tumble headfirst down the road to serfdom. I believe, therefore, that I am the person with the enthusiasm, the experience, and the skills to make this happen.
You might think that a committed grassroots activist would be immersing himself in the grassroots back here in Australia. But soaking up the concerns and opinions of ordinary Australians is clearly not what the movement needs. What Tim is looking for is people willing to stick up for ordinary over-taxed Aussies by bankrolling his organisation. "Please help me", he writes. "I cannot do this on my own. I cannot raise the money necessary, I cannot come up with the business plan, I cannot create the strategy all by myself. I need your help."
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Does this mean that the socially conservative groups who believe in small government can’t get along with the socially liberal ones (such as the stuff John Humphreys set up)?
I also don’t know why people go to these nutty organizations in the US that think things like being able to spray DDT on your household weeds is fine and that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with the temperature. They could just take a trip to HK and see a fully functioning small government that doesn’t feel obliged to correlate its views with the loony right.
Spraying DDT on your weeds will do no harm to your household whatsoever. It will not even harm the weeds!
Tim: …these skills are impossible to pick up at home. I have no doubt whatsoever that we need to set up a free market grassroots advocacy group in Australia
Don: You might think that a committed grassroots activist would be immersing himself in the grassroots back here in Australia. But soaking up the concerns and opinions of ordinary Australians is clearly not what the movement needs.
Hear Hear Don.
Alas Australians love the idea of big government.
I would love to spray DDT on the walls of my house. One of the penalties of living in a leafy suburb appears to be bloody mosquitos.
I certainly hope that if he does try he comes up with something better than GetUp.
So why hasn’t the market created a “genuine grassroots free market advocacy organisaiton” already? Is Andrews saying that the market has FAILED?
Even some Tea Party supporters want their government to keep spending on Social Security and Medicare.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an interesting take on the tea party movement. He argues that their distinguishing commitment is to karma rather than freedom or small government.
“It will not even harm the weeds”
Haha, yes, sorry it’s Sunday. I was thinking of insects etc. in weeds, but it doesn’t appear like that!
“They could just take a trip to HK and see a fully functioning small government that doesn’t feel obliged to correlate its views with the loony right.”
Perhaps answering to a communist dictatorship partly explains this…
I wonder what part of the right spectrum conrad would allocate HK’s views on welfare to…
“I have the fortune of having won that roulette of lottery that is US citizenship ….. these skills are impossible to pick up at home [my emphasis]”
I dunno if I was a patriotic Yank that I’d be too happy with giving citizenship to someone who clearly still thinks of another country as their home.
“I wonder what part of the right spectrum conrad would allocate HK’s views on welfare to…”
They work fine in HK, where it’s legitimate to bodge off your relatives before getting benefits (there are in fact unemployment benefits available, but they’re very hard to get), so I don’t think they are on the loony right. Also, whilst the benefits are minimal compared to here, half the population lives in public housing, so that really changes the perceived equation a lot.
Incidentally, if the list on Wikipedia is correct, you can add Taiwan and Singapore to low tax countries that are rich (Australia is in fact low on the tax-take list if you exclude poor countries), so perhaps Tim just needs to learn what it means to be Chinese.
I love the metaphors too. I can just see him tumbling headfirst along the road while establishing grassroots. Has the fascist octopus sung its swansong yet?
As Orwell notes, promiscuous use of near-dead metaphors is a sure sign the person is not paying attention to what they’re writing.
Oh, you know how it is with the fascist octopus; cut off one head, grows back three more… When you are doing the dishes or invading Afghanistan, you can win a lot of battles but the War on Freedom just never seems to end.
On the bright side, murdering a metaphor gives lasting satisfaction.
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