The Legacy of Gordon Brown's, and Perhaps, Obama's Socialism??

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7127819.ece

Labour hid ‘scorched earth’ debts worth billions

By Marie Woolf and Jonathan Oliver

UK Sunday Times

May 16, 2010

THE government last night accused Labour of pursuing a “scorched earth policy” before the general election, leaving behind billions of pounds of previously hidden spending commitments.

The newly discovered Whitehall “black holes” could force even more severe public spending cuts, or higher tax rises, ministers fear.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, said: “I fear that a lot of bad news about the public finances has been hidden and stored up for the new government. The skeletons are starting to fall out of the cupboard.”

The new cabinet has been discovering previously unknown contracts and uncosted spending commitments left by their spendthrift predecessors.

“There are some worrying early signs that numbers left by the outgoing government may not add up,” said Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister.

David Willetts, the universities minister, claimed that Labour had left behind “not so much an in-tray as a minefield”.

Billions of pounds in public money was committed in the run-up to the election campaign in a deliberate strategy to boost Labour’s chances at the ballot box and sabotage the next government.

One former Labour minister told The Sunday Times: “There was collusion between ministers and civil servants to get as many contracts signed off as possible before the election was called.”

One former adviser to the schools department said there was a deliberate policy of “scorched earth”. “The atmosphere was ‘pull up all the railways, burn the grain stores, leave nothing for the Tories’,” he added.

The disclosures come as George Osborne, the chancellor, prepares this week to reveal details of an initial £6 billion of cuts to help plug the hole in the £163 billion deficit. A full emergency budget next month will see some departmental budgets being slashed by up to 25% as well as tax rises, including a possible hike in Vat.

Many ministers are spending this weekend going through their red boxes trying to understand the scale of the budgetary black holes facing their departments.

This week the government is expected to call a temporary halt to recently signed IT contracts, while new public sector construction projects will be reviewed.

The “black holes” that ministers have already unearthed include:

- A series of defence contracts signed shortly before the election, including a £13 billion tanker aircraft programme whose cost has “astonished and baffled” ministers.

- £420m of school building contracts, many targeting Labour marginals, signed off by Ed Balls, the former schools secretary, weeks before the general election was called.

- The troubled £1.2 billion “e-borders” IT project for the immigration service, which, sources say, is running even later and more over-budget than Labour ministers had admitted.

- A crisis in the student loans company where extra cash may be needed to prevent a repeat of last year’s failure to process tens of thousands of claims on time.

- The multi-billion-pound cost of decommissioning old nuclear power plants, which ministers claim has not been properly accounted for in Whitehall budgets.
- A £600m computer contract for the new personal pensions account scheme rushed through by Labour this year, which will still cost at least £25m even if it is cancelled.

Maude, who has been given the task of reducing Whitehall waste, insisted that ministers were not scaremongering to paint their predecessors in a negative light. He said there was widespread concern that Labour had become particularly spendthrift in the run-up to the election campaign.

“We put the last government on notice that contracts should not be signed without specific ministerial direction,” he said. “We are now seeking to find out what has been committed in the last few months.”

He hinted that the hidden “poison pills” could force the government to look at even more dramatic spending cuts than the ones already being envisaged. “It certainly doesn’t make the task of reducing the structural deficit any easier,” Maude said.

Willetts revealed that while Lord Mandelson, whose portfolio covered business, innovation and skills, had recently announced large cuts in the universities budget, little work had been done to plan exactly where the axe might fall.

“The outgoing Labour government left not so much an in-tray as a minefield,” Willetts said. “Issues that were left behind as too difficult to tackle by the previous regime are going to have to be dealt with.”

Gerald Howarth, the new Tory minister for defence procurement, disclosed that the financial pressures on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were even graver than he had been expecting. “The appetite for new programmes exceeded the capacity of the MoD’s stomach, particularly in the run-up to the election,” he said. “In the past few months there was a rush of new orders. What we are going to have to do is ensure the equipment programme matches the military need.”

Defence sources say the military has been using the urgent operational requirement (UOR) to borrow money from the Treasury to fund equipment for Afghanistan that the MoD could not afford to buy. “They’ve been using the UOR system like a credit card,” one source said, “and they’ve been maxing out on the card to the point where they’re around £700m over the limit. It’s all got to be paid back.”

Osborne’s cuts package to be announced early this week includes a freezing of spending on new IT projects, stopping most public sector recruitment and renegotiating deals with government suppliers.

With speculation growing that Osborne is planning to announce an increase in Vat from 17.5% to 20% next month, there are growing fears he could face a tax revolt from left-leaning Lib Dem backbenchers.

Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes said on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: “Our party remains an independent party. We will take views. We don’t suddenly change our policy.”

[WILL OBAMA & THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DO THE SAME TO AMERICA???]

If Brazil's Government Shows NO Respect for Brazilians' Private Property, How Safe Are Foreign-Owned Investments & Property??

Senselessness March


by Denis Lerrer Rosenfield *

* Denis Lerrer Rosenfield, professor of Philosophy with Ph.D. from Paris University and author of 'Hegel' (Jorge Zahar Editor, Coleção Passo a Passo) among other books.


Original source: Diário do Comércio on 01/28/2008


Published at Mídia Sem Máscara on January 29th, 2008


http://www.midiasemmascara.com.br/artigo.php?sid=6332&language=pt


Translated by INSTITUTO LIBERDADE, Porto Alegre, Brasil






This country never ceases to surprise us. When we think we have seen just about everything, there comes a new fact, one which defies any parameter of common sense.




The Brazilian Minister of Social Security, Luiz Marinho, has just issued a federal act granting social security coverage to invaders of land owned by the state or private individuals.

In other words, invaders would now have social security coverage as a reward for their violations of property rights. They would be treated exactly like any tax-paying worker. Furthermore, when making his decision, the minister considered property as something petty and irrelevant, something that ought not to be taken into account.


There is no rule of law in this government. Legally, invaded property should not be the object of expropriation. And still the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, a government agency, validates such acts. Invaders should have their names removed from settlement lists. However no measures are taken to identify and punish these people caught from the commission of crime and breaking the law. The government just turns a blind eye on it. And the make-believe becomes this “new” reality, even more vexing as it attempts against the very pillars of a free society: private property and the rule of law.


As if this was not enough, the government also funds the so-called social movements with taxpayers’ money, transferred to NGOs that act as “middle men”. The rationales vary greatly: some highlight “solidarity education” and “alternative cultivation” or other such shenanigans. Revolutionary imagination takes its course, “freely”. But one thing which is never spoken clearly is that these resources are in fact funding invasions as well as the formation of their consciences. This is how dogmas are passed on.


And this education takes place with the help of textbooks that rewrite history under the perspective of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. They come in all shapes and colors. More recently, this new “humanitarian” called Hugo Chávez, who is so fond of kidnappers and narcoterrorists, has moved up to being the new mankind beacon. Under such perspective, the terrorist FARCs are “humanitarian”!


However, the "news" is far from over. All over the country, university courses have been popping up in areas such as Law, Pedagogy and Veterinary, all tailored to the needs of “social movements”. Like a “special reserve” just for them. This political organization nominates those who will take part in such courses, and elaborates curriculum programs catered to their needs and agendas. This method of education, so-called “participative”, is done according to an ideological prism, meant to serve as a guideline to the rupture “movement” of the representative democracy. Thereby, a “university” is created within the university, funded by the Ministry of Education, with total disrespect for equality, since merit and aptitude should be rightfully the main entry criteria to an institution for higher education. In reality, taxpayers are the ones paying for the advance of “socialism”, namely “totalitarian democracy”.


And taxpayers keep footing the bill with no limits. There is a complete lack of sense. Invaders are also financed with public funds through programs such as the family-grant (which distributes money on a per-child basis), food staples and special schooling. Imported products (from Uruguay), such as rice, follow these violent groups. But their hard liquor is made-in-Brazil. Invasions are carried out using the money taken from each one of us, through taxes and contributions, to maintain and conserve these so-called "social movements". Workers must pay taxes, while invaders are the beneficiaries of these transfers of assets and properties. Do not forget: in each invasion, you get to see your own resources being used!


Now, in a brand new act of “generosity” with other people’s resources, the government plans to grant invaders social security coverage. Indirectly, landowners are paying for the violation of their own property. The MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) and similar organizations are able to offer one more “service” to their “affiliates”. That is, a revolutionary organization, trying to destroy the foundations of a free society, ensures social security coverage to their militants and members, as long as they follow all orders and instructions whenever they are told to do so.


If this senselessness march goes on, the next step could be to consider the relationship between invaders and invaded (or kidnappers and kidnapped, in cases of violated property, an increasingly usual practice) as an “employment relationship”, in which bandits have rights and can even claim workers´ compensation. It is not excluded the possibility that certain judges might even issue judgment in favor of the plaintiffs! In senselessness, there is no such thing as something impossible.


Just picture the situation. MST invades a property and its members establish themselves for over a year on the land. This is common in the state of Paraná, for example, where governor Requião disobeys court orders for possession reintegration. Invaders would pretend to work, harvesting some produce. Under the prism of senselessness, an “employment relationship” would then be in effect. The landowner, having lost possession of his or her property and suffered all resulting losses could then be held “responsible” by invaders who could well turn to courts seeking “justice”. However surreal this might seem, the reality is that we are moving towards such disregard to the primary rules of democratic society and to the rule of law.


Today, landowners are often forced, by court order, to pay for the transportation of the landless people to their places of “origin”. Besides their losses, farmers must bear the invasion costs. And who is paying for the bus tickets, paying for very logistics of invasions? You are!


[THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT ENGAGES IN THE SAME PRACTICES CONCERNING BRAZILIAN & FOREIGN PATENTS AND TRADE SECRETS: JUST ASK THE U.S. & EUROPEAN LIFE SCIENCES COMPANIES]


[Brazil Charged with Leading a World Gang of Intellectual Property Predators, Brazzil Magazine:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/8071/54 ]


[Lula Desrespeita A Propriedade Privada ‘Tomando’ OS DPP De Investidores Estrangeiros
http://www.itssd.org/Publications/artigosentrevistas_rev(2)-KoganarticleIEERevistaLeader-June2007.pdf (P.47) ]


[Lula Disrespects Private Property, ‘Taking’ Foreign Investors’ DPP
http://www.itssd.org/Publications/LulaDisrespectsPrivateProperty,TakingForeignInvestors_DPP.pdf ]


[Forced Licensing of Drug Patents Reflects ‘IP Counterfeiting’ Efforts on World Stage
http://www.itssd.org/Publications/ForcedLicensingofDrugPatentsReflectsIPCounterfeitingEffortsonWorldStage-WLF06-22-07kogan.pdf ]

The Chinese Are Gradually Learning the Virtues of Political AND Economic Freedom

The Thin Chinese Line

By John Pomfret January/February 2008

Foreign Policy Magazine

Caijing, Issue 196, No. 21, October 15, 2007, Beijing

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=4085&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4085

“Yearning for Reform." It's not exactly the type of headline you'd expect to see on an opinion piece written by the editor of a Chinese publication. But that's what Hu Shuli titled the lead editorial of the October 15 issue of Caijing magazine. Written in the run-up to China's Communist Party Congress, she argued convincingly that China needs democratic changes, and it needs them now. Exactly what the party leadership should do, Caijing left us only to guess. Still, the fact that a mainstream Chinese publication openly embraced democracy means something in today's China.


Although unusual for most Chinese media, Hu's gutsy editorial was typical fare for the readers of Caijing. An amalgam of Forbes, Fortune, and BusinessWeek, with a muckraking edge that makes it hard to categorize, Caijing is China's leading financial magazine. With a circulation of about 100,000, Caijing focuses most of its energy on battling the crony capitalism widespread in China's business world. Occasionally, it takes even bigger risks by tackling Chinese government officials themselves, such as with the magazine's in-depth and influential coverage of the SARS epidemic in 2002.


With the tightening of restrictions on the Chinese media due to the insecurity and lack of vision of Hu Jintao, China's current president, Caijing has often found itself the only media outlet in China that's covering important stories that make headlines in the outside world. It alone profiled Jiang Yanyong, the whistle-blowing doctor who accused Chinese authorities of lying about the extent of the SARS epidemic. In June 2005, it broke the story of Zhang Enzhao, the former chairman of China Construction Bank who had mysteriously "resigned" his post a month earlier and was under investigation for corruption.


That story was revelatory for the Chinese press; the confirmation that Zhang was in trouble came from a court case filed in the United States. Chinese reporters realized, said one former editor, that "even if the Chinese government kept quiet about cross-border scandals and shut up all domestic sources, there's a sea of open information beyond China's borders that is fair game to anybody with good language, investigative, and research skills."


Caijing's investigatory zeal has helped prompt significant change in China. In 2001, the magazine reported that Yinguangxia, the second-largest company on China's stock exchange, had falsely reported hundreds of millions in profits. Although some government officials backed the company and wanted to censor the article, Caijing used a fake cover to trick those officials into thinking the magazine was publishing something else. After the story ran, the Communist Party turned around and embraced the idea that listed companies needed to be regulated; it passed laws to regulate China's stock markets and issued regulations allowing classaction lawsuits. "We focus on the role of watchdog more, thinking about pushing transparency and honoring the public's right to know," says Hu, Caijing's editor. "We'd like to think of ourselves as woodpeckers, chipping away at China, trying to prevent the country from slipping into the trap of crony capitalism."


Hu also has backup. Caijing's publisher is Wang Boming, a garrulous scion of China's Communist aristocracy. Wang's father, Wang Bingnan, was a former deputy foreign minister and worked closely with then Premier Zhou Enlai. Wang is on a firstname basis with many senior Chinese officials; something that can come in handy when Caijing butts its head against China's censorship rules.


A graduate of Columbia Law School, Wang returned to China in 1989 with the dream of founding China's first stock exchange. He succeeded, twice; exchanges were started in Shenzhen and Shanghai. With that work done, Wang started an investment firm and a media company he called seeC and began publishing magazines.


In 2003, Wang engineered to have seeC's advertising and distribution business listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking the first time that a Chinese media company had placed its shares abroad. That financial success means that Caijing boasts the country's biggest editorial budget per journalist, giving its staff plenty of time and resources for the investigative long-form journalism that has become its hallmark. It also means Caijing's journalists are paid well enough to avoid the normal practice among Chinese reporters of accepting a payoff in return for favorable coverage.


Thanks in part to Caijing, the range and depth of topics that are regularly explored in the pages of China's press and on its airwaves has increased. Social issues such as premarital sex, homosexuality, AIDS, domestic violence, corruption, and illegal land sales by Communist Party functionaries-all taboo in the past-can now be explored with unprecedented candor.


In October's editorial, Hu addressed her argument to China's political and economic elite, among whom the idea of democratic reform has lost traction because many fear losing the enormous gains they've made in recent years. "Some argue that pushing forward with political reform will be destabilizing," she wrote. "Yet, in fact, maintaining the status quo without any reform creates a hotbed for social turbulence."


But is anyone at Party Central listening? I think not. Caijing may have helped contribute to an information revolution in China, but the political revolution is still a long way off. Communist Party censors routinely shutter wayward newspapers, fire gutsy editors, and jail recalcitrant reporters. And though gutsy editors like Hu Shuli occasionally dare mention the need for political reform, there's no sign that the Communists are willing to change their one-party ways.


So far, Caijing has escaped the often cruel fate of a Chinese periodical: a padlocked front gate and a silenced printing press. But Caijing, like other Chinese media, also pulls its punches. The Tiananmen Square crackdown is off-limits. So is reporting about the practices of Falun Gong. And during the SARS epidemic, the magazine killed a major investigation into the failure of the party secretary of Guangdong Province to deal with the disease when it first erupted in November of 2002.


Is the plucky Beijing weekly a sign of China's future, or just pretty window dressing tolerated by a party that understands the uses of a loyal opposition? As a cautious pessimist about the cause of political change in China, I sadly vote for the latter. Caijing pulls its punches because it must. In a country with an eager supply of informants and a journalistic ethos more focused on printing puff pieces for cash, Caijing may be a rare bird, but it's one that seems fated to live caged.

Latin Economic Freedom Declines

http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=1987


Latin Economic Freedom Declines


Latin Business Chronicle - Special Reports


BY CHRONICLE STAFF


January 15, 2008


Economic freedom in Latin America is declining, according to a new survey by the Heritage Foundation and Dow Jones.



"The lack—and in some cases, erosion—of economic freedom in the Americas reflects reversals of free-market policies and a failure by some governments to persevere in pursuing economic freedom," say the editors of the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, which was released today.



11 of 20 Latin American nations surveyed saw a decline in their scores compared to the 2007 index, according to a Latin Business Chronicle analysis of the data.



BRAZIL AND MEXICO



Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, saw its overall score fall by 0.8, while Mexico - the region's second-largest economy - boosted its score by 1.2. Heritage classifies both economies as "Moderately Free."



Chile is still ranked as the freest economy in Latin America, followed by El Salvador and Uruguay. Meanwhile, Cuba is ranked as the most repressed economy, followed by Venezuela and Haiti.



Corruption, inflation and weak property rights are the major trouble areas for regional economies, they say. "The recent rise of populists like Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez threatens to widen the freedom gap in the Americas even more," the report says.



CAFTA BEST



Measured by trade groups, CAFTA is the freest and ALBA the most repressed, a Latin Business Chronicle analysis shows. CAFTA's average score was 62.72 points. Mercosur had the second-best result, with an average score of 61.13 points. The Andean Community followed, with 58.22 points. ALBA had 48.78 points. However, within ALBA there are big differences, with Nicaragua's score of 62.7 points considerably higher than that of Cuba, 29.7 points.



Among nations that saw declining economic freedom were Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica - typically seen as investor-friendly nations - and Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua - which are run by investor-hostile governments.



And - despite increased moves curtailing private enterprise - Venezuela actually boosted its score compared to last year. Other nations that improved their score include Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay and Haiti.



"The typical ...Central/South American nation stands out positively in terms of limited government taxation and expenditures, as well as strong labor freedoms. The other five freedoms are also slightly stronger in the Americas than they are elsewhere, with lighter trade, investment, financial, and regulatory burdens," the report says.



DOMINICAN REPUBLIC



The Dominican Republic improved its score, but continues to be ranked among the worst countries in Latin America despite having a government widely seen as pro-business. The low score is mainly due to weak property rights and widespread corruption, but also still-high inflation.



"The court system is inefficient, and red tape is common," the report says. "The government can expropriate property arbitrarily. Most confiscated property has been used for infrastructure or commercial development. Although the government has slowly improved its patent and trademark laws, the enforcement of intellectual property rights remains poor."



And corruption is perceived as significant, it points out. "Official corruption is pervasive," it says. "Despite recent reforms, Dominican and foreign business leaders complain that judicial and administrative corruption affects the settlement of business disputes."



The Dominican Republic received a low score in the monetary freedom category thanks to inflation still being too high (averaging 10.7 percent between 2004 and 2006) and price controls to electricity and fuel, subsidies of some agricultural products and electricity generation. "An additional 10 percentage points is deducted from the Dominican Republic’s monetary freedom score to account for policies that distort domestic prices," the report says.


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