election funding

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On GEO group, conservative politicians, lobbyist groups, and prisons

Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, May 2nd, 2010 - 9 comments

In Florida, a legislative plan to close as many as five state prisons and ship inmates to a private prison run by GEO Group was scaled back last month.

The feds may be searching to see if former state House Speaker Sansom received any kickbacks from the company. The GEO group are also contenders for running private prisons here.

Power pulls a swifty on electoral finance

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, April 30th, 2010 - 25 comments

The Electoral Finance (Reform) Bill contains a major change from what had been previously indicated. The regulated period for limiting election expenditure could be as little as six weeks. This is effectively a 50% increase in the expenditure cap.

It looks like a swifty by Simon Power tilting the election playing field.

Electoral finance reform hohum?

Written By: - Date published: 2:53 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 11 comments

I’ve been looking for feedback on Simon Power’s electoral finance reform package but I can’t find anything from Labour. After the hell that rained down on them over the EFA (much of it richly deserved) I can only assume that Labour thinks National’s got it about right.

More dodgy fundraising by ACT

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, October 22nd, 2009 - 13 comments

The ever industrious No Right Turn has turned up more dodgy fundraising practices by ACT. Last month, three ACT MPs held what was billed as “a forum” on “the hard questions – and some answers” at the plush Mecure Leisure Lodge in Dunedin. Three strikes, VSM, local government, and smacking were discussed. People were invited […]

Oldest trick in the book

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 am, October 14th, 2009 - 7 comments

How do you get someone to change their mind about something they like? Simple, find one negative element to it (nothing is perfect) and blow it into a major issue. Nick Smith knows how to do this, he’s built a career on it. Now, he’s trying to make compensation payments to criminals the issue in […]

When you wake up to the fact your paper is Tory

Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, September 30th, 2009 - 29 comments

Hilarious reading through the Herald’s Your Views on election funding. Seems the Herald’s meek acceptance of the Government’s electoral funding plans has alerted a few of their readers to the fact they were duped by the paper’s blatant political advocacy for National last year. Here’s what Jay of Swanson had to say: I am gobsmacked […]

Electoral finance: the proposal document that didn’t

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, September 29th, 2009 - 7 comments

Rob Salmond Yesterday Simon Power released the Government’s Proposal Document about how to reform electoral finance. On the easy issues, he got it vaguely right. That is a start, at least. So we’ll have one electoral agency instead of three (good), we’ll keep the rules about political donations first proposed in the Electoral Finance Act […]

Flexible Farrar

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, September 29th, 2009 - 30 comments

If DPF doesn’t practice Yoga already I think he should take it up. He’d be a natural. He’s so damn flexible! I’ve had occasion to comment on this once before. But for the EFA we see DPF lowering the bar of consistency to unbelievable depths, and limboing right on down. The Electoral Finance Act (EFA). […]

Power’s electoral finance reform proposals out

Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, September 28th, 2009 - 32 comments

Justice Minister Simon Power has released the Government’s proposals for reform of electoral finance law. Remember, Labour’s reforms of electoral finance law were branded an assault on democracy and free speech by National and its affiliates like the Herald. There were protests in the streets (oddly, at the Wellington one, most of the several dozen […]

Electoral finance – summary of submissions

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, August 7th, 2009 - 15 comments

The Ministry of Justice has released a summary of the submissions it got on its Electoral Finance Issues Document. They got 79. The Ministry gives out some figures about some figures on how many submitters were for or against certain ideas. Of course many submissions did not cover all issues, but the balance of opinion […]

Fisking Farrar’s fisking

Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, July 9th, 2009 - 40 comments

Yesterday David Farrar presented us with his analysis of Labour’s electoral finance submission. There is a lot of ‘Nya Nya I Told You So!’ in there every time Labour’s position changed from 2007 to now, and a fair bit of ‘Nya Nya They Haven’t Learned Anything!’ when its position did not change. That kind of […]

Reminder

Written By: - Date published: 4:57 pm, June 25th, 2009 - Comments Off on Reminder

No Right Turn reminds us that submissions on the government’s election funding issues paper are due in tomorrow. It doesn’t have to go into huge detail, a few key points will probably do the trick. If you want some pointers on what to say Rob Salmond has some suggestions here, and you can download his […]

Electoral finance part deux: have your say!

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 23rd, 2009 - 8 comments

Guest post by Rob Salmond It is almost time for you to send your submissions on the government’s issues document on electoral finance. Submissions are due on 26 June, here’s where you can email the submissions. This is the only time we all get to throw around options before the government comes out with its […]

How to write a submission on election finances

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 15th, 2009 - 25 comments

The National-led government repealed much of Labour’s Electoral Finance Act and is now asking the public what should be in a new law on election finances. Please take some time to write a submission backing greater fairness and openness in financing of election campaigns. All you need to do is: head up an e-mail or […]

Questions

Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, April 16th, 2009 - 27 comments

We should expect National as the political arm of business to surround itself with dirty money and conflicts of interest. As a self-proclaimed social democratic party Labour has no such excuse. So: – What is Labour’s education spokesperson Chris Carter doing accepting election donations from a private college? – Why is Shane Jones accepting money […]

Nats still involved in dodgy donations

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 16th, 2009 - 38 comments

The Herald covers some of the donations to parties and candidates before the election. One of the big donors was the Road Transport Forum, the trucking lobby, who were behind the famous ‘truck strike’. They’re getting value for money eh? National’s Transport Minister Steven Joyce has taken half a billion out of public transport and […]

Talleys: Corporate scum

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, April 6th, 2009 - 41 comments

I’ve long been of the opinion that the Talley family, owners of the Talleys food empire, are a corrosive force in this country who have a complete contempt for their workforce, the public and our democratic institutions. Sure enough, they’re at it again. NZPA reports: The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) plans to call […]

Lord Ashcroft woz here

Written By: - Date published: 4:33 pm, March 25th, 2009 - 17 comments

Boing Boing reports that: The London police have bested their own impressive record for insane and stupid anti-terrorism posters with a new range of signs advising Londoners to go through each others’ trash-bins looking for “suspicious” chemical bottles, and to report on one another for “studying CCTV cameras.” It’s hard to imagine a worse, more […]

Third party returns

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 10 comments

The Electoral Commission has released the third party spending returns for the 2008 election campaign and it looks like for all National and ACT’s fears that the $120,000 third party cap would stop groups from being able to express themselves, only the Council of Trade Unions came close with a spend of around $100k. Other […]

Once bitten

Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, February 24th, 2009 - 43 comments

After his gaffe last time Key’s made a point of openly announcing his next meeting with the Tories’ deputy chairman, strategist and largest donor, Lord Ashcroft. A company controlled by the billionaire is currently being investigated back in the UK for possible breaches electoral law relating to its political donations. Key insists that Ashcroft hasn’t […]

Madoff, transparency, and electoral regulation

Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, December 28th, 2008 - 17 comments

Reading about Madorf and the filching of USD 33 billion in a pyramid scheme from his select group of customers makes for interesting reading. It draws the attention (yet again) to the dangers of having a lack of transparency in financial markets. As the Economist says, it was “Dumb money and dull diligence“. What marks […]

Nats scrap citizens’ jury on electoral reform

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, November 28th, 2008 - 42 comments

Frogblog reports: The Green Party initiative to have electoral reform reviewed and managed by a citizens’ jury has been scrapped by the National government today. While not surprising, it does mean that electoral reform falls back into the hands of the politicians – putting the wolves back in charge of the hen house. The press […]

Dunne’s deal?

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, November 3rd, 2008 - 37 comments

The revelations in today’s Dompost that Peter Dunne’s United party took a donation from the Vela family shows again what a messy business donations can be. The Vela family opposed New Zealand following a new UN fishing agreement. Ross Meurant, acting for the Velas met with Dunne, days later he issued a press release opposing […]

Caught in the ACT

Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, October 24th, 2008 - 48 comments

The Dom Post reports that ACT will have to file amended returns after failing to declare $20,000 of donated office space. Luckily for ACT nobody found out until they got past the time-limit for prosecution. Rodney Hide is, of course, not embarrassed. I’m reminded of that proverb about glass-houses.

Sensible Sentencing Trust in drag?

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 pm, October 19th, 2008 - 29 comments

Act have run an anti-crime protest outside of Mt Eden today and it was particularly theatrical by the sound of it with lots of coffin lids and whatnot. ACT have never done anything like this before. But the Sensible Sentencing Trust certainly has. I’ve asked before why the trust has refused to register as a […]

Authorised for the Right…..

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, October 12th, 2008 - 7 comments

From the campaign launch, I got this photo, and decided that I’d put it up for the skulkers complaining about the EFA. For some reason they were conspicuous by their absence (didn’t want to tangle with 1600+ activists?). For the EFA fetishists, please note that Mike is authorising himself. I didn’t sneak around to get […]

Not with a bang but a whimper

Written By: - Date published: 6:11 am, September 23rd, 2008 - 38 comments

The Privileges Committee has reported back. Peters is censured for not declaring that he had made a pecuniary gain from his lawyer taking donations for Peters’ legal fund. A minority of the Committee, the Labour and NZF MPs, disagreed with this censure pointing out that the evidence given to the Committee was that, had Peters […]

Compliments and questions

Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, September 18th, 2008 - 25 comments

First, it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by a tory. Turns out Tony Friedlander’s Road Transport Trust is not just donating to National. As well as $30K to the Nats, Labour got $20K and other parties will get something as well to help the democratic process. Can’t help but notice National got the most though. […]

ACT’s fifth Candidate?

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, September 18th, 2008 - 54 comments

The word around the traps is that ACT will be announcing the name of its mystery 5th list candidate at its Law and Order policy launch this weekend and it’s rumoured that the candidate will be David Garrett. Garrett is a Barrister and is also a legal advisor to the Sensible Sentencing Trust who drafted […]

Nothing to Hide? + more moaning

Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, September 15th, 2008 - 46 comments

Prime is running a series of interviews every Sunday until the election with the leader of each party in Parliament, starting with Rodney Hide last night. It was surprisingly good. Hosted by Bill Ralston with a panel of Barry Soper, Audrey Young, and Colin Espiner, some good questions were asked and Hide himself was good […]

Nats still getting money from trusts

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, September 11th, 2008 - 79 comments

One of the great things about the EFA is that donations over $20,000 must be declared within 10 working days. Because of that, we have today learned National received $30,000 from something called the Road Transport Trust on August 27. The Trust is clearly a front – there is no record of it on the […]

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