Another great piece of work from I/S at No Right Turn: “the Exclusive Brethren have set up their own KiwiSaver scheme… The scheme will only be offered to members of the cult. This is, of course, illegal.” They’re trying to take taxpayer money for a business that illegally discriminates on the grounds of religion. It must be stopped.
The CTU have launched the latest of their quirky and cute campaigns. Job Survivor Island illustrates the effects on real people of the […]
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The Great Depression saw the rise of rightwing reactionarism. Out of reactionary movements came fascist governments from Brazil to Romania. We had the 100,000-strong New Zealand Legion. The Great Recession is spawning a new wave of militant reactionarism, now reaching our shores.
This year, as last year, we miss out on both Anzac and Waitangi days as holidays. And the Government refuses to do anything about it. Phil Goff and the EPMU back all workers getting their rightful public holidays like any other year – but John Key apparently doesn’t think it’s do-able, that it needs “research”.
This post from the Oil Drum looks at how peak oil and the economy interact. From 2004 to 2008 oil prices rose and rose with demand. But high prices bought nearly no new oil to the market because it isn’t there. The prices broke the global economy, destroying demand. Now, prices are rising again and the weakened economies will topple much easier.
Hard to imagine a bigger waste of money than sending a frigate to hunt fisherman who’ve turned to piracy because foreigners have illegally taken all their fish. How’s about we spend the money on aid to Somalia instead? Oh right. Can’t afford it says McCully. But vicariously playing the action hero hunting ‘evil pirates’, yeah, there’s cash for that.
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Under the supposed rules of capitalism, investors take a “haircut” if an investment goes bad – no reward without risk. It’s also Economics 101 that giving relief to the ‘little people’ will have a more stimulating effect on the economy than if you bail out the wealthiest interests in society. But the powers that be are breaking the rules to aid the rich.
As has been amply demonstrated by comments on The Standard in recent days, there are many who believe that the answer to an ineffective deterrent is more deterrent; that leaving in place the likelihood that fleeing from a police car will result in your death is somehow discouraging an unknown number of drivers from fleeing. Increasingly, though, people who respond with their critical faculties as opposed to their knees are realising that the present model of law enforcement and incarceration is a failure.
For years, the American Right has been ramping up its violent rhetoric. Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement have encouraged their followers to think that their guns are all that stands in the way of a socialist coup. Now, the violence has become real and the Right has, largely, baulked. Will the Tea Party’s rhetoric be scuttled?
The Left have too long accepted the Right’s turf to fight their battles on. Instead of appealing to individualism, the Left need to make community the norm. But whilst avoiding their turf, we do need to use the Right’s preferred weapon – emotion. We must counter their offer of individual wealth for a few with collective happiness for all.
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No, this post isn’t about Smile and Wave’s failure to close the gap with Australia. It’s about the widening gap between the tiny elite in this country and the rest of us. Even before the Great Recession, 10% controlled more wealth than the rest of us combined. The housing market shows that their wealth is still rising while ours falls.
Blinglish is confident that voters understand the economy and back the government’s (lack of) direction. In fact he better hope that voters don’t understand the economy, or notice National’s lack of help to an economy shedding jobs and headed into double-dip recession, or he won’t get voted back in.
Our guest poster writes about a letter he had published in the Herald recently. A clever wee missive, it started ‘helpful’ in tone but had a sting in the tail on the inaction of Key’s do nothing government in the face of recession, unemployment, and peak oil. The Herald cut off the sting leaving a ‘pro-Key’ letter. What are they up to?
Campbell has a good post on the problem of voters’ emotional reactions to Key and Goff as exemplified by the Sunday-Star Times Horizon poll (the striking thing is how little emotional response they elicit). I’ll look at the party numbers. Horizon tries to include which way the undecideds will fall – the results have National worried.
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The Sunday Star-Times has produced an interesting article on the role of emotion in people’s voter choices leading into this year’s General Election. […]
Only one US Congressperson has ever been assassinated – Leo Ryan during the Jonestown Massacre. Gabrielle Giffords may become the second after a gunman shot her and others, killing at least one, in Arizona. This appears to be part of a rising tide of violence from America’s far-right Tea Party movement, driven on by Glenn Beck and others.
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Farrar and Slater are trying to knee-cap a poll in the SST tomorrow. They know the numbers because Key’s office told them. Obviously jittered. Slater says it has NZF at 8.9%. Movement of ipredict stocks suggest its bad news for Nats and Labour. If Nats are in mid-40s then they’re in danger territory. Very hard for them to find a majority.
Why New Zealand’s lack of a fast jet military capability is suddenly an issue? We been fine without it for nine years. Renowned defence expert David Farrar weighs calls the decision to mothball the Skyhawks and Aermacchis ‘terrible’, citing the $34 million spent keeping them saleable, but how’s that compare to the cost of keeping them flying?
Youth unemployment is 19.8%, but is there much coverage of a shockingly high number? That’s 1 in 5 young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs to the initiated); higher than the OECD average.
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Back to civilisation after a few days bush. First thing I see in the paper – another kid killed in a police pursuit. 20 in the last 12 months. Makes me so fucken angry. Police policy needs to change. I don’t have the answers. But these people didn’t deserve to die. 20 lives and who knows how many injured is not acceptable. Can’t be beyond us to do better. Can’t be.
With oil heading back to $100+ a barrel, food prices are also rising. That makes sense, fuel and fertiliser from oil are major food production costs. The global food price index is now higher than it was in 2008. In New Zealand, we’re supposed to celebrate high food prices but the reality is it means starvation and social unrest around the world.
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I never, ever thought I would say this but there’s a very good article in Investigate this week. It’s about the Pike River disaster. With methane sensors in place, alarms should have gone off well before the gas reached combustible level. Investigate reveals the sensors may have been disabled by workers who would lose pay if they had to stop work.
Over recent years the anonymous editorials in the NZ Herald have become increasingly variable. Some have been written by authors who I’d disagree with their ideas, but who clearly have examined the topic in enough depth to be able to argue for and against alternate ideas to arrive at their editorial judgments. Then there are others that have clearly been written by authors with little understanding of the topic and are simply coded dog-whistles unworthy of the editorial page. I have a look at one of the latter.
It’s not just about fees, or cuts, but about the essential corruption of the current system; so it replays the confrontation between the great British radical movements of the past and the landed-gentry “Old Corruption” that they fought to tame. Compared to 1968, the student movement is now much larger and more broadly based, with deeper roots into the working class and society in general, and so the revolt is, if anything, more profound.
What’s to stop a government minister taking taxpayer money and giving it to, say, a family friend or a political slush fund? In theory, lots. There’s a formal budget-formation process through the ministeries and Cabinet, the Budget then has to be approved by Parliament, and the PM would sack any minister who tried such blatant corruption. Wouldn’t he?
When was the last time that John Key mentioned the ‘underclass’? In his Statement to Parliament at the start of last year – after Eddie called him out on never talking about the underclass – but he didn’t actually read that part of the statement. So, what has Key actually done for the underclass that he purported to care for so much? Nothing. He’s let poverty worsen.
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Our guest poster looks at the “Warm Arctic / Cool Continents” idea about why Europe and North America have been cold and the Arctic has been so warm over recent years. Quoting Conrad, our guest then skewers ‘skeptics’ with the statement “Or to put it another way: you might not be interested in global warming, but global warming is interested in you.”
In December, Dunedin City Council released its Peak Oil Vulnerability Analysis. We’re going to weather the peak oil age largely reliant on the built environment we already have in place – we can’t tear it all down and start again in time – but, the report shows there’s a lot we can do with the infrastructure we have to make it less oil-dependent.
