The iwi corps are building or trying to build a long-term asset base largely in long-term property investments (sort of a reverse land-grab). They are often leasing these out in multi-decade leases. They then use the revenues to finance the types of things that they need in their communities. Some they are using to finance their way into purchasing other land. Obviously the reason for this is that they are planning on running century long acquisition campaigns, which they can do because the ownership is vested in the iwi itself. Hopefully, it is a lot more difficult to alienate than in the 19C. Of course they are acutely aware of what happened in the 19C with the government writing laws to allow asset alienation by changing the ownership arrangements away from the customary in-common hapu/iwi ‘ownership’.

Normal business people do not do that kind of long-term planning. By Maori standards they are all short-term get-rich speculators. The nearest western analogy to what the iwi are doing is the churches who operate on a similar time scales. Guess what, they don’t like the speculators getting access to their businesses either.

My frustration as I think it’s clear is that I believe that Maori could benefit more from working with National such being the vagaries of MMP.

Maori economic independence sits natively with National’s pro-business – Maori sovereignty may not site so comfortably with National, but economic independence does.

I readily agree that some nats are still in the 19C. Not all. And if the Nats could be smarter, they could develop a strong relationship for the betterment of NZ.

Sadly for my viewpoint, I see a majority of Maori are still of the opinion that their best interests are served by voting Labour. I’d love to see the Maori Party bringing something different to the table with the Nats.

Randal, being intolerant to people who are different to you, or who hold different views, occurs in all human societies. You certainly don’t need to be in possession of money to be bigoted.

[randal is not saying all bigots are rich. SP]

I don’t know about that – about the first thing I heard about Palin was that she thought the Flintstones was based on a true story. I thought the reason the Wright thing got such major play was because of the YouTube footage rather than the media actually investigating. I think Palin has been pretty effectively branded as a religious wacko who is a female version of George W Bush, but less intelligent (of course that does actually seem to be the case).

SP probably overstated that case to make his point. However he was talking about two particular people also expressing their opinion and effectively stating how close to a stereotype they conformed. Now I have to say that watching those two idiots made my blood boil as well – but I was slightly more restrained (as you can see from my comment first up on this thread).

I’d agree with SP that it is a crappy look for the conservatives when you get the same old stupid idiocies about female appearance not only from the nutters, but also from the deputy leader of the main conservative party. What in the hell does it matter if Key looks like a penguin. Or Helen looks like she is aging. You’d have to wonder who in the hell he was trying to send that message to – his daughters?

Very true – attractive photogenic politicians like JFK, Obama & Bill Clinton do have a major advantage.

The ACORN stuff is mostly a beat up. Registration fraud is not in any way the same thing as voter fraud.

Palin’s religious beliefs have gotten very little attention compared to Wright. To argue otherwise is just insane.

Yep, and I read he actually apologised before he passed away!

The McCain campaign is being run by Steve Schmidt who worked on the 2004 Bush campaign under Rove, and they are running a typically dirty campaign. Given that they’re lying about a number of things, you’d expect them though to also mention things like Jeremiah Wright, or the ACORN association. I think the fact they haven’t is because the media will accuse them of racism. I’m not sure that bringing up the dodgy practices that ACORN were involved in is necessarily racist though. Also, Palin’s wacky religious beliefs have also been brought up.

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need retouching for politician’s photos. But sadly, in this world, people judge politicians far too much by their appearance, and not enough by their leadership ability- and this is even more true for female politicians like Helen Clark. Even if John Key didn’t try to smarten himself up on his billboards- he’d still be at an advantage, because as a man he’s judged by his appearance to a lesser extent.

Well, the ‘terrorist’ Obama is accused of “palling around with”, William Ayers, is white, so I’m not sure bigot is the right word in that context. Misleading seems more appropriate.

The McCain campaign has actually avoided some more obvious attack points like the ACORN association & Jeremiah Wright. I think they have just in the last few days done an ad on ACORN, which has been involved in voter fraud.

It’s not surprising the McCain campaign has avoided this. The media accuse Republicans of racism on the most contrived of pretexts (for instance the NY Times suggested the Britney & Paris ad was appealing to fears of interacial s8x, while the William Ayers association was suggested as ‘racially tinged’). The media seem to have the same view as SP, that whites are uniquely greedy & nasty, so any criticism of non-whites is immediately suspect.

Let’s say I was to make comments about a discussion I had with a Maori or Samoan and then tried to claim it was representative of all such people.

Guess what you’d call me then.

The issue is not that these people don’t exist. They do. But SP is claiming ALL exhibit these qualities. Poor indeed and detracts IMO from the constructive posts he makes with all those damn charts!