Racism on the left

Now imagine if a Maori dominated company was overseas and seeking to buy shares in a company - imagine if a national of that country said that after lowering the value of that investment "The fact that it may annoy the Maoris is just icing on the cake"

Yet Idiot Savant is saying just that - except it is about Canadians. Yes, annoying Canadians is a GOOD thing. Evil Canadians. You see, it's ok to be racist on the left as long as you are racist when a handful of the people of that nationality want to legally buy shares in an airport in your country. The British National Party would agree wouldn't they?

No doubt he would claim this ISN'T racist. However it IS racist to want the New Zealand Parliament made up of seats that represent one people by party vote and by electorates determined by demographics and geography, not race.

Confused? Well you can't ask him directly on his blog, but it is a peculiar kind of reality evasion that the left undertakes when it refuses to be TRULY colourblind.

I am. I don't care about whether one is foreign or not, or Maori or not. It is the behaviour and what an individual advocates that concerns me.

So many on the left claim to be anti-racist, but have a deep suspicion of foreigners who do business, and positively embrace racism by those they deem "oppressed". I guess if you think of people as pigeonholed in groups, then it is hard to give up a habit.

Yet another victimless crime.

Stuff reports that Labour, National, NZ First, United Future and Jim Anderton have all voted to ensure you can no longer legally choose to ingest BZP. Well done Jim Anderton for pursuing a crusade driven in part by his own personal tragedy - and being blinded to alternatives, and National's most vapid MP - Jacqui Dean, for engaging in a piece of personal fascism.
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Good for ACT - at last - standing up for personal freedom and voting against it.
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Good also on the Greens and the Maori Party, the latter being a surprise given the views of some of its MPs on banning tobacco.
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Nanny State has extended her tentacles to another substance that adults can ingest - and the National Party was a leading cheerleader. This alone should demonstrate to lovers of individual freedom that National IS no friend of freedom. It does so in the face of pitiful evidence of any benefits from the ban, as fisked so well on Not PC recently by MikeE.
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However perhaps the inane statement of the day comes from Damien O'Connor - the truly switched on Labour MP for West Coast-Tasman - "I believe that party pills will virtually disappear from New Zealand following the enactment of this bill," he said.
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Much like cannabis, ecstasy, P and all other drugs have.
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Meanwhile the jobs from the BZP industry will either disappear or be transferred to the criminal fraternity - and those who consume it now face the risk of it being poorer quality, higher priced and being distributed along with a whole host of other drugs.
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Now it's naughty and illegal too. However I wonder if ANY of those MPs who voted to ban it have tried it? If they haven't, why not?

British budget - just more taxes

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has released his first budget and it's about tax.

Sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco are up, and the extortionate fuel tax will be up in 6 months (in the UK over 80% of fuel tax does not go on roads).

New taxes are imposed on new cars - a "showroom tax" on all new vehicles, rated at CO2 emission levels. Of course taxing new cars means it is cheaper to keep an older car for longer, increasing net emissions - but this is about tax.

A tax on plastic bags also has nothing backing up whether it will generate net benefits for the country - just an excuse for more tax, with the money going into an environmental charity slush fund. Set one up today to take advantage of it!

Then there is the "non dom" tax. Non domiciles resident in the UK for more than 7 years will have to pay £30,000 to retain their status, or face being taxed on their overseas income. That will undoubtedly have a negative effect on London's status as a world financial capital.

On the other side there is more money for the military because of the cost of commitments in Iraq, and more money on welfare - allegedly to relieve child poverty, but I guess others can make judgments as to how much extra welfare is spent on children, and not on the higher cost of alcohol and tobacco. Pensioners get more money to subsidise their energy bills (yes its funny that the compulsory state pension that you can't inherit isn't one to survive on).

and all this with £43 billion in borrowing. The UK has a huge budget deficit and growing state debt. The prospects for that being addressed in the near future are very slim indeed while Labour continues to grow the state sector.

So why overthrow the Taliban?

It takes a bit for me to agree with both Peter Dunne and Idiot Savant, but the case of Afghan student Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh is compelling.

One reason I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and overthrow of the Taliban was to liberate the Afghani people from Islamist oppression. Unfortunately, instead of invading, occupying and introducing open liberal values and government, the coalition, including New Zealand, allowed a less radical form of Islamism to take over.

That is where Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh comes in. He faces the death penalty for blasphemy, for the simple act of writing an article questioning the treatment of women in the Koran. Afghanis should have free speech and should be able to debate matters of religion and morality. It is abhorrent and unconscionable for Afghanistan to murder someone for saying something that offends many.

What is worse is that New Zealand has troops there, defending the current regime. As Idiot Savant says "We wouldn't support Iran's rabid theocracy with troops; why are we supporting Afghanistan's?"

Indeed. It is time for all of the New Zealand Parliament to condemn this, for the government to raise this with the Afghani government, and demand that the sentence be commuted. Indeed apparently Condoleezza Rice and David Miliband have both raised the issue on behalf of the US and the UK.

Otherwise, all we have done is gotten rid of a set of aggressors against the West in favour of a set of aggressors against their own people.

Muldoon's back with more subsidies

Back in the bad old days of Rob Muldoon, industries would clamour for a subsidy or a tariff or import quota, to protect them, promote exports or help “encourage jobs and innovation”. Those days were largely gone after the fourth Labour government, which ruthlessly purged corporate welfare partly to save taxpayers’ money, but also to ensure a “level playing field” with the government not “picking winners”.

After an initial shock, most businesses accepted that with the government out of the game of dishing out subsidies and protectionism there was no longer the need to lobby for such things and business could get on with producing and selling.

However, this started to be eroded with Jim Anderton converting the largely policy advisory Ministry of Commerce into the more interventionist subsidy Ministry of Economic Development. The “winners” picked by Jim Anderton’s subsidy machine – NZ Trade and Enterprise – are probably not worth looking at too closely, when you write off the losers. Of course since you didn’t want to “invest” in those businesses anyway, you were the loser either way.

Now according to the NZ Herald Labour is throwing $700 million of your money away on the food and pastoral sectors to promote innovation. Business NZ Chief Executive Phil O’Reilly responds to this by saying “This is an excellent model for commercialising research, based on research-industry collaboration”.

Commercialising? Since when it is commercial to use taxpayers’ money, which might otherwise have been used by OTHER businesses for their innovation?

Nobody would argue with innovation by business, but wouldn’t it be simpler to just forget subsidies and cut company tax some more? For starters, how about a company tax rate of 15% (half that of Australia, and lets bring income taxes down to match)? How much innovation might THAT bring?

Meanwhile National, showing a growing pattern of "me to" ism, has a press release saying "National Party Leader John Key says National will make a significant increase in funding for agricultural research and development, but it does not support the model announced by Labour today.... We will make long-term funding commitments that provide certainty to the sector because we see it as a way of lifting productivity and helping to make New Zealand a smarter nation."

Um, how about letting businesses keep more of their own money? "knock knock" any policy innovation at the National Party?