Keynesia's new plan

So what about that fiscal child abuse then?

Going through the Kiwiblog list:
- 5 new schools? While the private sector closes good schools as it struggles to attract parents forced to pay twice for education if they want to opt out of the state sector. Wonderful stuff - Labour lite indeed.
- School refurbishments and maintenance? So did Labour do this on the cheap or is this just about bringing forward some paint and roof repairs that would have been done anyway? This is the economic equivalent of saying you can stimulate the economy if more windows are broken and need repairing.
- More special schools facilities. Any notion of how many will use these, and whether it would be cheaper to just pay the kids families' directly for a tutor?
- A trades academy on Southern Cross Campus in Mangere. So you couldn't give people taxes back and let them pay for this?
- Help schools accelerate existing building projects that have stalled. What the hell is THAT about? School's mismanaging funds? Funds cut for political or administrative reasons? Or is it just an admission that the centralised socialist education system provides opportunities for such unaccountable mismanagement?

- 69 new state houses. You thought the property market had stagnated, so clap National for wanting to help that along. Isn't it good to get more people housed by the state? Good job Labour won the election.
- Upgrades and renovations to 10,000 state houses! Only worthwhile if they add net value to the houses, before they can be sold. I'm sure that is behind it all right??
- Small regional roading projects? Well given all road taxes are now spent on land transport, this is a subsidy for roads, but are the projects all of a high value? Hopefully we'll find out soon.
- Accelerating large state highway projects? Well here I can add a little value:
- Kopu Bridge replacement? Good, though a prime candidate for a modest toll, one sign this is worthwhile is that Jeanette Fitzsimons doesn't like it.
- Matahorua Gorge realignment. This is State Highway 2 between Napier and Gisborne. Not a bad project, but not particularly high value.
- Hawke's Bay Expressway southern extension. Oh please, this is far from necessary. Hardly any congestion or safety issues here (and you wonder why two projects in Hawke's Bay?)
- Muldoon's Corner easing. Removing a hairpin curve on the Rimutaka Hill Road. Sounds like a cheap alternative to Transmission Gully, improving the second route out of Wellington. Not a high value project.
- Christchurch Southern Motorway. By far the largest project, and one that does ease congestion. A major new route into Christchurch from the south will make living in Rolleston more attractive (seriously).

No extra money for Auckland state highways, which indicates how much Labour poured money into them.

So be grateful the package is rather small, its damage will be relatively small, but hey most of you want the government to "do things" right?

Iran's 30 years of Islamist terror

The 1979 lesson of Iran was a painful one for the United States. The regime of the Shah had spent previous years becoming increasingly authoritarian, despite its secular outlook its intolerance of dissent and its own extravagance sowed the seeds for opposition. Iranians overthrew the monarchy and embraced a new form of authoritarianism. Secularism was gone, the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded.

From then, the Iranian regime has brutally oppressed those within its borders who wish to see an end to secular rule. An Islamic cultural revolution was imposed, with the Committee for Islamization of Universities ensuring an "Islamic atmosphere" for every subject, including engineering. Broadcasting and the press was severely restricted with only Islamist programming permitted. While discussion and debate is allowed, it is within an Islamist context. In other words, you can criticise policies, but you can't criticise the Islamic Republic.

Women have a lesser status in Iran. For example:
- A woman needs her husband's permission to work outside the home or leave the country;
- the value of woman's life is half that of a man;
- Daughters are entitled to half the inheritance of sons;
- Women are required to cover their bodies and hair.

Notice how the peace loving feminist left regularly protests outside Iranian embassies about this. Yep, notice how invisible they are.

Apostasy (converting from Islam to another religion) is punishable by death, so tough luck being raised as a Muslim.

The criminal age of legal responsibility is 15 for boys and 9 for girls. Iran has executed 26 people under 18 since 2005. I have noticed the extensive protests and flag burning about that by the peace loving left. It executes over 300 prisoners every year.

According to Human Rights Watch "Iran retains the death penalty for a large number of offenses, among them cursing the Prophet, certain drug offenses, murder, and certaincrimes, including adultery, incest, rape, fornication, drinking alcohol, "sodomy," same-sex sexual conduct between men without penetration, lesbianism, "being at enmity with God" ( haddmohareb), and "corruption on earth".

Internationally, the Islamic Republic has annually called for death to the USA and death to Israel. It has supported the IRA, Hamas, Hizbollah and been a base for training terrorists. It thumbs its nose at the IAEA while it develops its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, it has a President who denies the holocaust, who cheers on the eradication of Israel.

The Islamic Revolution is a reason to jeer. Not because the regime it overthrew was good, but because this is worse. It was like the Khmer Rouge overthrowing the corrupt nasty Lon Nol regime in Cambodia.

So today why don't you tell your local Iranian embassy to fuck their revolution, and that you can't wait till Iranians can live their lives the way they wish, without the Islamist bullies spying, arresting, torturing and murdering them. While you consider that, ask yourself why so few of the leftwing protest movement give a damn about Iran. Ask why they tolerate women being treated as men's chattels (and no, comparatively liberal Tehran is not the measure of that country). Ask why they are silent over the execution of a 16 year old girl because she had sex with unmarried men, but will jump at the chance to damn Israel to hell for engaging in a war of self defence. Ask why they protested en masse against US nuclear warships, but wont raise a banner against Iran's nuclear programme.

The sooner the Islamic Republic of Iran is an era (error) in history of Iran, the better, the safer for the world and Iranians. The secularist bullies need to be sent back to the mosques, out of Parliaments, out of laws and let Iranians be free.

Iran's government is evil. If you doubt it, then read this post I made two and half years ago, about the children the scum execute. Yes lovely types.

The flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran isn't worth wiping your arse on and setting fire to - but it would be nice if someone did it.

Obama's confusion of whose money he is spending

"Only the federal government has the resources necessary..."

That's called a lie. It doesn't have it, it is printing it, borrowing it from future childrens' taxes.

You see that's the problem. Mortgaging future taxpayers now, and NO accountability for it.

Maiden Speech 3: Kevin Hague: Green and confused

In my ongoing series catching up with the new MPs, there is Kevin Hague. A new Green list MP. My hopes weren't high, but he was CEO of the West Coast District Health Board - you would hope someone of that position, responsible for a region's healthcare, would be clever.

His maiden speech is here.

So:
- He is keen on the Treaty of Waitangi (whatever rocks your boat, funny how the Green party does so badly in Maori seats).
- He doesn't believe in objective reality instead "a new economics that values intrinsic natural characteristics and recreational use". Presumably if different people value things differently, Kevin will sort them out?
- He doesn't believe that you can change your health by your eating, drinking, exercise, smoking, drinking and drug taking because "the health of a population group is largely a reflection of the power it has over its own circumstances, and the environment surrounding it, and that good health improvement can only result from political will". Yep, only politics can make you healthier. Idiot.
- You can only be happy once? "Growth achieved through the bubble economics of speculation is exploitation of another sort, where the non-renewable resource is human dignity and happiness". Happiness isn't renewable?
- Yet he is an atheist and proud of it. Wonderful stuff "I absolutely reject the idea that ethical or moral behaviour has its source in religious faith." I absolutely agree that it need NOT have such a source.

Then he goes off beam:
- "In the absence of such external power then the responsibility for determining how we should live together, and for acting to achieve that state, is solely, but collectively, ours". See no objective basis for it, people vote for how they should live together. Like some tribe.
- "Only two coherent philosophies are possible: survival of the fittest, with no regard to the effect on any other person, or a world in which we recognise our interdependence and respect for the equal and inalienable rights of every person. I have a passionate allegiance to the second of these belief system" Bollocks, there are other philosophies. People are not interdependent, but they can enhance their lives by trade and exchange and being social.
- Now we know what he means, he likes Marxism "It has echoes in ‘to each according to their need; from each according to their means’ or in my personal motivator "If not me, then who? If not now, then when?"

So it's Darwinism or Marxism - nice!

He goes on, he even thinks we should iron out everyone's opportunities to be the same "What are these inalienable rights that each person is entitled to? Eleanor Roosevelt (driving force behind the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, which we celebrated yesterday) referred to equal justice, equal dignity, and equal opportunity." How do you guarantee equal opportunity or equal dignity unless children are raised collectively in some Orwellian nightmare? I doubt he understands that though.

Yet then he just, for a few sentences appears to get it "I think another valuable right to conceptualise is autonomy, provided that the exercise of that autonomy does not reduce that of another person. For me the opportunity to make decisions affecting one’s own life, tempered only by the effect of those decisions on others, is driven directly from this central idea and is exactly the idea captured by the Charter principles of appropriate decision-making, and non-violence."

I'd like to hear him talk about that. The effects of the decisions on others though is not the same as not infringing on the rights of others. After all, if I decide not to spend money, or not to take a job or not to go out with a friend, it affects another - but I should have that right. Why should anyone else make such a decision?

Then we get into the envirovangelism: "My personal principle is to take only what resources I need from the natural world and to harm the natural world to the least extent possible." He wont be driving, flying or eating more than subsistence then. Look forward to Mr Ascetic's principle actually being proven wrong.

He remembers the death of Bobby Kennedy (sad but yawn).

So really, he's a bit confused. How the people of the West Coast coped when he was Chief Executive of the West Coast District Health Board is beyond me. He's a Marxist, a believer in armageddon and has many bizarre ideas (maybe he just doesn't pick his words well, which is particularly bad in a legislator).

Nick Smith gives trolley buses free run?

Government genius Nick Smith has been reported in the NZ Herald saying the government planned to waive road user charges on electric vehicles.

Odd that, given that road user charges are set to recover the costs of road maintenance from vehicles that don't pay petrol tax. Electric vehicles aren't weightless.

However, Smith may learn that opening his mouth before he understands something can cost. You see there have been electric vehicles paying road user charges for years - Wellington's trolley bus fleet being the notable ones. Not many indeed, but these are heavy vehicles that do tear up Wellington streets, and not charging them for doing so (but charging diesel buses) would make Wellington Bus and its owner, Infratil, rather happy.

So Nick, giving trolley buses a free ride on the roads too now? How many more electric cars will be encouraged because they wont be paying 4.5c/km?