Having decided to beat up on a few thousand of the most hard done by young people in the country, National is now refusing to acknowledge the problem of disconnected youth that has ballooned under their watch. There are enough young people who aren’t in education, training, or work to fill Eden Park, and Key is literally running from the issue.
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Or how the food card will inevitably push beneficiaries into all types of deeper strife.
The cartoon (since it doesn’t show up clearly and you might be wondering) is a lifebelt being thrown in the “Welfare” cell and a book titled “Learn to swim” being thrown in the second “Welfare Reform” cell.
Today Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world, has come out demanding his mega-rich friends play a part in the American economic recovery. He is recognised as one of the smartest and most successful investors alive, his words should not be dismissed lightly, especially as we approach our own election and grapple with the issue of tax reform.
The private operators of the new Mt Eden remand prison are using desserts as a reward for good behaviour. It seems to work. But the Right doesn’t know quite how to react: on one hand, it’s mollycoddling prisoners, on the other hand it’s a private operator being innovative. Imagine how they would have reacted if the public prisons started doing this.
Like most of us, Fran O’Sullivan was expecting so much more from the Nats at their conference…
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At National’s conference John Key accused Labour of the “politics of envy”. Peter Goodfellow told delegates they had more money for this campaign than ever before. National’s coffers will be bulging because of their assets sales policy. Labour wanting to keep assets publicly owned for everyone’s benefit is not at all about envy.
National aim to score political points by attacking a small number of 16 and 17 year-olds, and taking away their autonomy. But they’re missing the real-world point – of the tens of thousands of young unemployed who need the jobs that National aren’t providing. That’s the real crisis.
What are the baby-boomer elite doing to our kids? Our rulers, drawn from the selfish generation, have taken more and more of the world’s wealth for themselves, wrecked its environment, and failed to invest. Now, with National in power, they’re asking the young to pay off their debt. And when the kids get pissed, the elite doles out repression.
A better than usual interview of John Key by Guyon Espiner on Sundays Q+A. On the plus side Espiner was raising some serious issues. On the minus he let Key get away with his usual lies and evasions.
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Like the UK, we have a crisis in youth poverty. We don’t have riots, yet, because we lack the population density. There’s no jobs. Increasingly, no hope. Key’s solution? Tinkering. A bureaucratic, easily beatable system where young people on benefits get food stamps and basic costs paid directly. Where are the jobs, Key? Or have you given up?
Bernard Hickey writes compellingly on the coming fall of capitalism.
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English is under attack at the Nat conference over asset sales. The neolibs vultures treat the state as a carcass to pick clean. But old school conservatives believe in investing the nation. And business types know you don’t get rich by selling profitable assets. English has no good excuses. All he can offer is expensive measures that make selling even more unprofitable.
A few weeks back, I wrote that Labour’s policies are popular but it hasn’t secured the trust it needs to sway swing voters, partly people don’t feel they really know Phil Goff. Today’s Herald piece, reminiscent of one on Key in 2008 (except we get a lot more of the substance of Goff, not just carefully targeted anecdotes), should go a long way to fixing that.
Fran O’Sullivan reveals her softer side today. No, she’s not against National’s benefit cuts for the unemployed, the sick, and invalids. Nor against cutting the wages of the 103,000 working 15-19 year olds on the half-baked premise that will create more jobs. But leave single mums alone, she says, because she had one. It reminds me of something I saw on the Daily Show.
This editorial by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph on the riots and moral decay in Britain is up to 3370 comments. It’s worth a read.
Very little change over the last three Roy Morgan polls. Which suggests to me that voters still aren’t really paying attention.
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It seems that the US has lost an experimental hypersonic space plane. Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?
42% Murdoch-owned Sky could be in the market to buy debt-laden TV3 according to John Drinnan in today’s Business Herald. Drinnan says that “Sky owning Mediaworks opens up a myriad of issues, not least the degree that the Government would continue to back the growth of Sky TV’s monopoly and its extension into radio.” Amen to that. SkyTV’s chief John Fellett says he has no interest in another television channel. That may not be Rupert’s view. Monopoly TV revenue streams are his bread and butter. News for him is “entertainment”.
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Anyone else feel their heart freeze a little more when Brownlee labeled Christchurch’s rebuild plan “a pretty big wish list”? Here’s a once in generations chance to rebuild a city from the ground up. Going to cost tens of billions anyway. Why cheapskate by a few hundred million? Better to build a truly world-leading city designed for the future.
An Auckland University study, “Not in our waters, surely?” was released last night. It details a gruesome list of human rights abuses, crimes, and breaches of labour law being carried out abroad the slave ships contracted by our quota-holders to harvest our fish. Now, the government is moving to deport the prime witnesses before they can testify.
The first hints of the plans for the new Christchurch are out. What do you reckon?
Farrar and others of the Right push for ever lower taxes, but their arguments are laughably flimsy. Tax cuts don’t raise revenue. Tax cuts don’t cause growth. In search of their “superior moral justification for selfishness” the Right are going to have to do a lot better than that…
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I’ve just been playing Ben Clark’s asset sale game on his campaign website. (Ben is a fellow author here and Labour’s candidate for North Shore). In the game, you have to try to suck up the shares that John Key throws out before the big foreign buyers suck them up – it’s great fun and a little frustrating when they get the shares before you!
Fox News’ “virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s a political campaign attack ad” comes from a political consultant who repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, stoked racial fears to elect George Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail healthcare reform in 1993.
ACT’s Spending Cap Bill is coming to Parliament. It would cap government spending and only let it grow each year by inflation and population growth. At first blush, and assuming that you don’t want the government to do anything it doesn’t do now, this might seem like a way to maintain current services without adding more. But reality ain’t that simple.
National has brought out some of the biggest protests in decades. Petitions of tens of thousands have called on the government to raise the minimum wage, support Kiwi manufacturing through Kiwirail, and protect early childhood education. It’s core policy – asset sales – is opposed 2 to 1. The message from National: if you don’t like it, riot.
National will keep demonising the most vulnerable members of society for electoral gain, while turning a blind eye to much bigger problems.
