On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

On Fri, 24 May 2013, Tim Josling <tim.josling@gmail.com> wrote:
> > previous discussion that you refer to
> If there is any evidence of some parts of the ABC appear to have
any sort of right-wing bias then it refutes the claim that the ABC is totally
biased towards left-wing politics.

I don't think anyone would argue that the ABC is always and totally biased in one direction. That is a much stronger statement even than saying that overall they are seriously biased.

> An ABC employee once explained to me that the ABC had to have a left wing
> bias, to balance the right wing bias of the commercial media, a view I have
> some sympathy with. I remember one election night watching the ABC, and one
> ABC commentater stated "I think **we**'re going to win that seat", meaning
> the ALP was going to win it.

Who was the commentator and what was their position? Were the supposed to be
offering journalistic commentary or personal opinion?

From memory I think it was Ken Begg. His role on the night was to be an unbiased commentator on the progress of the election results. [This was not the sort of role where they get a working or retired politician to add some spice and inside knowledge from the scrutineers.]

There are other models, the Political Compass is one.

This is an improvement on a one-dimensional approach but still very crude. Not sure about using "left/right" for the economic dimension. I've done that before; it has me as centre on economics/slightly libertarian on the liberty dimension.

An ad-hominem attack would be to say "because he is heartless his arguments
lack merit", that's not my position at all.

I am surprised to hear this.

If they aren't all Randians who want the poor to live^D^D^D^Ddie in squalor then why does
the blurb for the book you cite suggest that the US government have no
provision for social security?

I thought I had suggesting reading the book rather than just the blurb. To give you a flavour, the argument re welfare payments is that government welfare programs have many pernicious effects, and that community based cooperative solutions, while not perfect, are better overall. I am not suggesting reading this because you are likely to agree with all of it but because it is quite eye-opening. As were Mein Kampf, Das Capital, and Poltics (Aristotle) in different ways.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

Tim