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Open mike 04/12/2009
Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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Search · 2009-12-01 to 2009-12-31 · Page 6
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Goff: Scrap the 2025 Taskforce
We all know the 2025 Taskforce is a farce and a waste of taxpayers' money. The Government has disowned it, the critics have panned it. Even Garth George has come out calling for its first report to be recycled into toilet paper. It genuinely appears…
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Hone back but Maori Party divisions laid bare
So Hone Harawira has been readmitted into the fold of the Maori Party. It's hard to see how excluding him from Parliament until the end of the year is a punishment, given that he has repeatedly said he detests the place (and who can blame…
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A world gone crazy
It started with me agreeing wholeheartedly with Fran about youth unemployment. Now I can add Garth George and Bruce Sheppard to this strange confluence of opinions. For a start Garth George has provided one of the few decent media critiques of Brash's batshit crazy proposal:…
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Words of wisdom from the 19th century
One of the most amusing things in the granny today is Garth George, our iconoclast from Rotorua ripping another hole into the credibility of the Brash Taskforce 2025. Absurdities abound, the first of which was the appointment of people like Dr Brash and Mr Caygill…
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Greens release Green New Deal pt 2
Anyone who thinks that our economic troubles are over because the economy grew 0.1% is delusional. And no-one seriously believes that we don't have to act quickly to stop the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Green New Deal is as necessary…
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Oram on the Brash Report
Always worth listening to, Rod Oram rips the Brash Report on Nine to Noon, not just on the findings but on the quality of the work, that we're paying half a million dollars for. Here are some of the choice quotes: "At every point it…
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Key of the seven veils
Here's a wee gripe in the morning. John Key. Did you ever see such a prima donna? Headline on Newsroom this morning: "Key And Copenhagen - Prime Minister John Key is preparing to relent on his refusal to attend the world climate change conference in…
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Obama – war president
Well, any lingering hopes that Obama was something different can now be out of their misery. He's just another American establishment politician after all. Drawing on the rhetoric of 9/11 Obama has committed to an escalation in Afghanistan: WASHINGTON - President Obama unveiled his plan…
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Open mike 03/12/09
Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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Need an exemption from the law? Just ask a corrupt Nat
Doug Schmuck owns and runs a boatyard in Opua in the Bay of Islands. The boatyard borders a public reserve. Schmuck wants to use that land as a slipway and other uses related to his business. In fact, he is already using the land and has already constructed…
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Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck parody
Caught this on The Nation. Brilliant. Jon Stewart has done it again, and this time he even brought out his acting chops. In what will probably become a historic Glenn Beck impression, Stewart uses Beck's recent appendicitis operation to concoct a conspiracy theory of his…
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Systemic failure of the media
felix in comments points out in his usual sarcastic style about the media response on Don Brash's 2025 Taskforce report. For example, consider this online poll (tvnz): What do you think of Don Brash's 2025 Taskforce financial report? It's too radical It's about right It…
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What works?
As the dust settles on the cynical theatre that was the 2025 Taskforce, one fact is becoming abundantly clear. The political Right haven't a clue what to do about the economy. Key and English don't have a clue, or they'd be doing it. Brash and…
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Guaranteed minimum income + capital tax, the way forward?
Occasionally something in politics really surprises you. Like when I turned over to Campbell Live last night (I'd seen the Family Guy episode too often) and there was Gareth Morgan proposing a guaranteed minimum income funded by a comprehensive capital tax. Guaranteed minimum income/negative income…
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Tax working group disappoints
I've had quite high hopes for the Tax Working Group. I thought it would be a genuine, ground-up review of the tax system with no assumptions that would start with basic questions (1. what do we want the tax system to do?). However, I've been reading through…
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Open mike 02/12/09
Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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President punches kid in face
The Associated Press reports: Romania's government has collapsed and its economy is in shambles but its presidential campaign has been dominated in recent days by a video that appears to show the president striking a 10-year-old boy in the face. Well, he's got the pro-smacking…
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With some time to consider….
I've been thinking about the reaction Phil Goff has had to his Nationhood speech, and whether Team Labour would be happy with the way it's rolled out. Got headlines, tick, got commentators to notice, tick, appealed to demographic 'non-Labour voting male', tick, made some positioning…
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Dubai: Subprime state
Dubai is the subprime folly writ large. In the US, they built 'exurbs' in the Californian high desert, two hours each way from LA; rows of McMansions bought by people who couldn't afford them whose lifestyles were dependent on cheap petrol*. In Dubai, they built…
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Undoing the trouser button
Recall that last week Speaker Lockwood Smith tried to heavy the press, demanding that they stop doing stories on MP's expenses or he would do away with the Press Gallery. I suspected at the time that this was a tactical blunder, any hack worth their…
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Tony Abbott elected Liberal leader
According Melbourne paper The Age, Tony Abbott is the new leader of the Liberal Party, winning the leadership by one vote over Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott becomes the Liberals' fourth leader in two years. I guess that now means Rudd will have to call a general election to…
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Remember this?
Pascal's Bookie dug up this classic in the comments: Congratulations.... You always knew that politics would be exciting, but I guess that neither of us thought that it would get quite this exciting quite so soon. Don, I wish you all the very best I…
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Tax Working Group report preview
Let's hope the Tax Working Group's report out today is more worthwhile than the effort of the 2025 Taskforce. The basic idea that has emerged from the interim reports is that we should try to take tax off income and put it on land. If…
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No more jobs for Nats’ old mates
Apart from keeping Don Brash well stocked with corned beef in his dotage, what exactly are we getting out of the Government's half million dollar 2025 Taskforce? The Brash Report is a joke. It reads like nothing so much as a collective ramblings of half a…
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Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention
Everyone played their part in reacting to the Brash Report. Bosses uncritically applauded it. Unions forcefully rejected it. Labour and the Greens exposed it as a strawman. Key bravely slew the strawman. And the Maori Party, well: "One of the recommendations in the report promoted…
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Open mike 01/12/09
Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...