Author Archive

Paula Bennett: Govt’s biggest loser

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, August 16th, 2012 - 75 comments

What a mess of a week Paula ‘out of her depth’ Bennett is having: Found to have breached the rights of a beneficiary who dared to speak out against Bennett’s cuts to a training allowance, which Bennett herself used while a solo mum. Caught out making up the story about drugged up beneficiaries turning out jobs. Delivered another rise in benefit numbers, when there are meant to be more jobs and fewer people on the dole.

Taking a hard line on moderation fallacies

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, August 15th, 2012 - 10 comments

I’ve got a new rule. If I’m reading any political ‘analysis’ and the author commits argument to moderation fallacy, I stop reading right there. So I don’t know what John Armstrong wrote after his third sentence yesterday: “The competing choruses of those who say it has not gone far enough and those who say it has gone too far would suggest it has things just about right.”

Base lies

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, August 14th, 2012 - 104 comments

So, Key’s over in Maine watching his kid play baseball (and, shush, taking the rest of the week off for another overseas holiday). Whatever. The thing that gets me is that he can’t help but lie to tell people what they want to hear. He’s told Maine media that the little leaguers getting to the world tournament is big news here. No, it’s not. It’s just news that our PM has gone to watch.

Put away the knives, the polls are up!

Written By: - Date published: 9:59 pm, August 10th, 2012 - 144 comments

I suspect that the knives that were out for a couple days this week will be quietly slipped back into their sheaths now. Labour’s up in the latest Roy Morgan. So are the Greens. The Left’s at 46% vs the Banks Key Government’s 44.5%. We won’t see more hamfisted attempts to undermine Shearer and attack Cunliffe clearing the path for someone else. Well, not until the next bad poll.

Kiwirail disgrace

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, August 9th, 2012 - 36 comments

Buying back Kiwirail was a chance for building a cost-, oil-, and carbon-efficient transport network. Instead, its been a tale of false economies: cheap trains from China, cheap sleepers from Peru, cheap labour from contracting out. In the end, it all costs more for worse results.

A modest proposal

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, August 8th, 2012 - 25 comments

I plan to start a business. I will be a job creator. 50 people will have jobs thanks to me. The whole community will benefit. My business will make poisoned puppy toys. Don’t get me wrong. They won’t kill every puppy who chews on them every time. Only 50% over the puppies’ lives. 30 puppies a year will die per job created. But – jobs! Does it make it better if I’m only selling the poison puppy toys in Australia?

Race-baiting works, a little

Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, August 6th, 2012 - 163 comments

Meh. National has race-baited over water rights to win back some of its wavering lower-middle class Pakeha support. It’s won some of that support back. For now. The thing about turning tides is that not every wave, or even every set of waves for some time, reaches less far up the beach than the one lowest before. Within each cycle there are dips and spikes due to events. Doesn’t change the cycle.

Standing up for freedom for the sexually adventurous Right

Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, August 5th, 2012 - 109 comments

For a guy whose god had two dads, Colin Craig seems pretty worked up about gays. He’s raised the spectre of marriage equality leading to polygamous marriage. I’m not sure what’s meant to be so scary about that. Polygamous relationships are legal. But Craig seems fascinated by it. It’s often those things we like least in ourselves that we criticise in others.

They eat their own

Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, August 3rd, 2012 - 27 comments

Anyone else taking a perverse pleasure in the Pullar-Collins-Boag-Judge affair? They’re all Tory villains. And they’re eating each other alive. Judge was handpicked to privatise ACC. Now, Collins is trying to stick the Boag email leak to him, Did he do it? Who knows. The other most likely option is Collins. So implicating Judge serves Collins’ purpose.

Nothing better to do

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, August 2nd, 2012 - 31 comments

Man, this brighter future sure is sweet. In just four short years, all the country’s problems are solved and the Prime Minister has literally nothing left to do. For a lark, he spends his time playing DJ. Oh… wait. Update- There’s a #DJJohnKey hashtag trending on Twitter in NZ. The Greens inviting suggested songs for Key to play. Pretty funny suggestions coming through.

The donkey and the ass

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, August 1st, 2012 - 45 comments

Key says the local elections law is an ass. Presumably, he knows what that phrase means: it delivers unjust results. Key thinks its unjust that Banks has escaped justice for his anonymous donation rort. Well, John you’re not helpless. Banks lied to media. He lied to you. He said he hadn’t solicited the donations. Didn’t know about them. He did. He lied to you and New Zealand. Sack him.

Key’s rock and hard place

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, July 31st, 2012 - 17 comments

Does Key respect the Waitangi Tribunal’s call for a temporary halt to asset sales and its likely call for a further delay when it presents its full findings in September? If he does, he looks weak, gives the Keep Our Assets petition more time. If he doesn’t, he picks a fight with Maori, resulting in court injunctions, again delaying the sales, hurting the sale price, making him look weak.

The rich get richer

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, July 30th, 2012 - 30 comments

The pay of CEOs in our largest listed companies increased at more than four times the rate of the pay of workers last year. And workers’ pay actually went backwards after inflation. Meanwhile, the average CEO has pocketed more than $1,500 a week of tax cuts from National. Meanwhile, the 150 richest New Zealanders saw their wealth increase by 18% in the past year.

Brownlee makes tectonic plates look like speed demons

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, July 27th, 2012 - 23 comments

After 18 months of doing nothing to fix the insurance crisis that every man and his dog has been saying is crippling the Christchurch rebuild, Overlord Brownlee has finally acted. He’s come out with …. wait for it ….. a big whinge at insurance companies. Oh bravo, Generalissimo Gerry. That’ll get the rebuild started. Well done, oh King of Christchurch. Your belated rant has saved us all.

The spy who loved me

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, July 26th, 2012 - 33 comments

Last month on The Nation (or Q+A?) Groser mentioned how the much hyped, but actually insignificant, free trade deal with Russia had hit a mysterious wall. Groser couldn’t even get to see the current minister and had “tough” talks with the ex-minister instead, while Key’s meeting with Putin was cancelled by Putin at the last minute. Now, I think we know what the trouble is.

Key confirms looters’ bonus

Written By: - Date published: 2:01 pm, July 22nd, 2012 - 173 comments

In front of a room full of rich people, John Key confirmed today that, when they buy our shares in our company they will also get a free hand out from the Government if they hold on to their plunder for 3 years. There’s no legislative authority for National to contract to make such a gift, of course. But, when you’re plundering the State, what do rules matter?

Dunne clears the competition for his backers

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, July 17th, 2012 - 54 comments

A cynic might ask if Peter Dunne is out to eliminate the competition of his mates and (it is widely thought) donors in the alcohol and cigarette industries by setting ever higher barriers for other legal highs. And I’m that cynic. I’m not against anyone selling something for human consumption having to prove its safety. […]

Key’s legacy

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, July 16th, 2012 - 40 comments

Which will be remembered as the greater crime in Key’s legacy: selling off our strategically vital and profitable energy assets leading to higher power prices or standing by and doing nothing while another housing bubble fueled by cheap foreign credit leaves us more indebted and with lower home ownership? Or the smug, absent grin he wore throughout?

Don’t it make you sick?

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, July 15th, 2012 - 27 comments

Old rich man, Don Brash, arch-advocate of private property rights, arguing against the property rights of iwi because they’re Maori. He says we shouldn’t have race-based ownership. No-one’s arguing for that. Iwi are arguing for the contract they signed with the Crown to be honoured. You would think a rightwinger would be the first to support that.

Water ownership – first principles

Written By: - Date published: 3:35 pm, July 14th, 2012 - 104 comments

When you have the legal power to control aspects of how something is used, those are property rights, and when you have the legal power to exclude use of something by someone -for instance, by allocating exclusive usage rights to someone else – that’s ownership. The Crown allocates water rights, ipso facto, the Crown believes it owns the water.

Dumb or dissing?

Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, July 12th, 2012 - 46 comments

Some of the media reckon that Key slagging off the Waitangi Tribunal was an accident of honesty: he was just stating reality that the Tribunal’s findings aren’t binding, he didn’t realise it would provoke a firestorm of reaction. Others say he knew exactly what he was doing and provoked the firestorm to try to split the opposition to asset sales along racial lines.

Justice denied for Dotcom

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 11th, 2012 - 10 comments

Shades of the Urewera shambles as Dotcom’s extradition drags out. It’ll be a year between the raid and his day in court. Meanwhile, they’re using extra-judicial punishment: bankrupting him by freezing his assets while his legal bills stack up. Going to end in Dotcom not being extradited because the evidence against him was gathered illegally. Then, he’s going to sue the Crown for millions.

Stay classy

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, July 7th, 2012 - 16 comments

Rumour has it that one of the Sunday papers is going to run a homophobic piece on a gay political figure. There’s no suggestion of impropriety, just: ‘hey this openly homosexual person’s gay, in case you didn’t know’. One paper a week. Limited space for politics. And they fill it with this. No wonder the print media is dying.

A good time for that plan to end whaling

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, July 6th, 2012 - 58 comments

Remember back in February 2010 when John Key announced that he had a super-secret plan to end whaling? I’m sure there’s some real clever strategy behind why nothing has come of it so far and Key never mentions it. But I think, now that he’s called South Korea’s plan to restart ‘scientific whaling’ “abhorrent“, it might be time to unveil the plan. It is real, eh?

Paul Reynolds takes the money and runs

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, July 4th, 2012 - 41 comments

$20 million. That’s how much Paul Reynolds pocketed during his disastrous 5 years as CEO of Telecom. You could have employed dozens of teachers and nurses over that period for that money. Instead, it all went to one man as the company he headed went down the toilet. What a broken system capitalism is. The kicker: the $1.75m goodbye gift, on which he got a $100,000 tax cut. Nice.

Legitimate calls for inquiries

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, July 4th, 2012 - 33 comments

Key has dismissed calls for an inquiry into the Police’s actions in the Dotcom affair. He says that the Greens call for inquiries every week. In fact, they’ve called for 19 in the past year and a half. Is that too many? Well, the Auditor-General didn’t think so: she responded positively to the Greens’ call for a investigation into Key’s dodgy SkyCity deal.

The price of National’s politicking

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, July 1st, 2012 - 81 comments

In a desperate effort to hang on to a few red-neck votes, National keeps on ramping up rhetoric against solo mums. There was talk of compulsory contraception or sterilisation. National played up those ideas, even though it hasn’t followed through. Is it any surprise, then, that poor mums, who don’t follow the news closely, just hear the rumours, are being scared into abortions?

Facepalm

Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, June 27th, 2012 - 115 comments

There ought to be a question asked of all prospective candidates: ‘when is it OK to compare a political opponent to Hitler’. The only acceptable answers: ‘when they start killing Jews’ or ‘when they invade Poland’. Anything else and they don’t get to be a candidate. Basic litmus test of political nous. All you do is taint your own side.

It’s for efficiency

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, June 26th, 2012 - 10 comments

Now we learn that directors’ fees are set to double after National sells or assets. Who pays for the fat-cats to get twice the cream for the same work? We do. Through higher power prices. It’s just another cost of privatisation that we all pay – despite the fact that Treasury reckons 95% of us won’t buy shares. No wonder 100,000 of us have signed the referendum petition already.

Nats to mine world heritage areas

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, June 25th, 2012 - 18 comments

The Greens have discovered that National is having world heritage areas in Northland and the West Coast aerial surveyed for minerals. They’re exploiting a loophole where some of the heritage areas haven’t been included in Schedule 4 of the Conservation Act. The next stage will be to give away the data to miners and let them rip up our world heritage areas.

Endless greed

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, June 24th, 2012 - 57 comments

It’s sickening to see rich ministers and columnists saying ‘of course we need to green the economy’ and then turnaround and promote fossil fuel extraction and agricultural intensification – things that will ultimately wreck the environment and the economy that is built on it. The truth is, we’re a hugely wealthy country already – it’s just most of the wealth is with the endlessly greedy elite.

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