Key's corporate welfare?

The NZ Herald reports that the PM is "not ruling out the option of helping Fisher and Paykel".

Which of course means using your money (or at the moment your future earnings) to prop up the company. How's your business doing? Could you do with some help?

Why not ask Santa Claus? After all, you'd think that's where the money is coming from.

Why should YOU be forced to pay to prop up one company? After all, you already do so.

You see if you want to buy a dishwasher or clothes washing machine or dryer from one of F & P's competitors, you'll pay a 5% tariff on top of the market price and GST. F & P's products don't face this (a bit less for countries where there is a free trade agreement like Australia).

So you're already doing your bit, by buying their products instead of facing the punitive tax on its competition or paying a tax for the privilege of buying the competition.

Here's a better idea. Cut company tax. Take the opportunity to drop company tax from 30% to 20%, giving all business a break, and have a substantially more competitive rate than Australia, the USA and most European countries.

Of course the quid pro quo should be simple, eliminate ALL forms of corporate welfare, all subsidies for marketing, R & D and the like. That means abandoning nonsense about building a broadband network that users aren't willing to pay for and telcos don't believe is a worthwhile investment. It means letting business be free to compete.

However, John Key appears more interested making you be a compulsory "investor" in F & P.

Oh and if you want ammunition for the left? Using taxes to prop up big business is just handing them it on a plate (though it's hard to beat the Clark government's support for Toll Holdings in buying the railways for well above market prices just before a recession).

Kim Jong Il turns 68 and miracles happen

though it is officially his 67th birthday. You see he was born in the USSR in 1941, but history was rewritten to say he was born at "sacred" Mt Paektu in 1942.

Amazing things happen near his birthday:

The Daily Telegraph notes how it is being reported that "An “unprecedented phenomenon of moon halo” was also observed on Sunday evening, making the night view above the leader’s birthplace “brilliant”. “Those who witnessed the opening of willow catkins earlier than the previous years and the unprecedented nocturnal view said excitedly that even the nature and the sky unfolded such mysterious ecstasy in celebration of the birthday of leader Kim Jong-Il"

AP reports South Korean freedom activists are sending balloons over to North Korea with money (North Korean money) to help encourage an overthrow and assist poverty stricken North Koreans to buy food in the workers' paradise.

Meanwhile scum, like neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers, celebrate his birthday.

You might finally care to read this Foreign Policy article, written by a man who was Kim Jong Il's teacher. Then ask yourself whether the apologists for this regime are worth spitting on.

Tariana Turia sympathises with taggers

So Tariana Turia has, according to the NZ Herald, described taggers "as a misunderstood subculture of artists". Showing her complete lack of understanding of private property (unsurprising really). She also said it was "about resistance". What? Against the government she is a part of? She continues saying it "is about alternative points of view. Some members of our community see it as a crime; others see it as an expression of identity". OK so everything is ok. An alternative point of view would be to vandalise a marae, there is an expression of identity. Damned post-modernist "anything is ok" nonsense.

Brian "don't believe in user pays" Rudman is upset at some of the reactions to the death of Pihema Cameron at the hands of Bruce Emery. He implies the sentence for Emery is too short, because Bailey Kurariki got more - except Kurariki's crime was premeditated. Michael Choy did nothing wrong. Cameron did, and Emery lost it in response.

Emery deserves to be punished. His response was disproportionate. Four years in prison is a heavy price to pay for someone otherwise unknown to the law. It sends a strong signal to others that retaliation for vandalism is not injuries that kill.

However, when Rudman says "Tourists talk about the friendliness of the New Zealanders they meet. But just below the surface there simmers a nasty uncharitable streak that should fill us all with a deep uneasiness. Perhaps it's always lurked there, and it's taken the anonymity of the internet to provide a conduit for it to ooze out. Whatever, it's much more scary to me than the odd tagger abroad at night." He is dead wrong.

The reaction of so many cheering on the unfortunate death of Cameron is over the top, but does not reflect a nasty uncharitable streak. Rather it is the experience of thousands of people sick of spending their time and money to pay for the likes of petty criminals and thugs who couldn't care less what their actions do to others. It could be tagging, it could be smashing fences, it could be car conversion, burglary, smashing windows or intimidating behaviour against yourself or your kids. It's the anti-social behaviour of an underclass that are seen to get relatively light sentences, and who unjustly get taxpayer funded welfare, housing, healthcare and other assistance, without any thanks. In other words, people who if it weren't for the hard work, enterprise and honesty of the average New Zealander, would have to work or die homeless, starving and sick.

Those who carry the underclass want to pay less tax, want to spend less time cleaning up the damage caused, paying higher insurance premiums and fearing those for whom the self sufficient are targets to abuse. Politicians who fail to hear this message fail to understand the deep anger, that Cameron should not have carried in such a terminal way, but what he represented - the underclass which thinks "fuck you" to those who make an honest living.

Tapu Misa in the NZ Herald sympathises with Cameron's family too. She is concerned Emery showed little emotion. Hardly surprising the man who is in shock that he went too far, that his life with his family and career are ruined, and he faces years incarcerated. Why SHOULD Pihema Cameron's life mean anything to Emery? It shouldn't mean anymore than any other anonymous criminal. We'll never really know what words were said between them, or how the boy acted with Emery, but we know Emery is paying for his mistake.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust is backing Emery. Misa claims it is racial saying "perhaps this illustrates the difference it makes when the person involved is someone McVicar can more easily empathise with - a white, middle-aged middle-class businessman". Maybe it is more a matter of a man who did nothing wrong overreacting to what was being done to his property? Certainly he shouldn't be set free - it is entirely inappropriate to allow vigilante justice when people in such circumstances could get it wrong.

However, the Standard thinks it is institutional racism, as does the Hand Mirror. Steve Pierson at the Standard thinks Bailey Kurariki was just an accomplice to a robbery "that went wrong", and says he is less culpable than Emery.

Let's be clear. In one case:
- Boy vandalises, is caught by the victim, victim chases him and stabs him, resulting in his death.

In another case.
- Boy acts as accomplice to a premeditated robbery, those participating beat the victim to death, boy shows no remorse.

They are not the same. However these are the debates that are needed about the role of the state and what the criminal justice system should do. The right to self defence is about exercising a proportionate response in the circumstances as you see them. Killing a tagger is not a proportionate response, but killing a tagger is not the same as a premeditated murder of an unprovoked victim.

Kim Jong Il thanks Hillary Clinton

Dear Dear Leader Vice President Hillary Bill Clinton

Thank you so much for your generous birthday gift offer. I knew the pending missile tests would get your attention. I get so ronery (yes I saw that stupid Team America movie too), sorry little joke. I know Bill loves jokes, like I love ladies. I know you like them too.

I’ll be 67, and there will be a huge party in Pyongyang today because the people here love me (see last year). Sorry you can't come, because you'd see millions out to see me, like the ones for your Great Leader Obama.

It pleases me so much at the magnanimity of the US imperialist aggressors that you want to make peace with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You have finally recognised that you were defeated in 1953 by the brave Korean People’s Army, much like my father singlehandedly kicked the Japanese scum out of Asia.

I know some say it’s because you now have Great Leader President Obama, who I see organises the same sorts of displays of public affection and fawning adulation that I and my father long have enjoyed. That shows me how much closer our countries have come. Bush didn’t understand mass adulation like Obama does. Your husband Bill is clever, letting the negro man take over to generate adulation, whilst putting you there as the real General Secretary. You don’t let people out of the family take over now do you? I mean, just because Great Leader President Obama has a background in progressive politics that made me smile don't mean you let the family down.

Anyway your gift is enticing. You want to give us the peace treaty we have long demanded, diplomatic relations and to take money from your taxpayers to help build my socialist economy. CNN said you want to” assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people”.

That’s wonderful news. The evil Bush overthrew one of our main markets for sophisticated aeronautical delivery devices, the grassroots drugs market is tough, and those Iranians aren’t wealthy enough to buy those new clear materials we try to sell them (your intelligence got the pronunciation wrong). I can’t seem to sell enough vinalon and magnesium clinker to be able to import Hennessy, Mercedes or computers for my humble country houses.

However, I know you’ll love my plans for the economy. There is a great hotel to be finished in Pyongyang, we want to set up a worldwide TV channel to spread the Juche idea of self reliance (which is catching on now capitalism is dead), and there are hardly any statues of me around. We have loads of workers of all ages in mountain camp homes where they eagerly work seven days a week, with enthusiastic supervision, and the lowest carbon footprint imaginable, ready to help build consumer products for your people. I also want faster internet access, so I can see the hard working young Swedish women who do so much to entertain workers of many lands with their lack of modesty. I know you’ll appreciate them.

Your gift it reminds me of the funny gift your husband Bill gave to the Korean nation in 1994. You were to spend US$4 billion giving us light water nuclear reactors and 500,000 tons of free fuel oil paid for by the US taxpayers (and some of your satellites) in exchange for us stopping plutonium enrichment. He’s such a laugh. We figured that since I run and control everything, and Bill joked about that girl (I could teach you all lessons on handling concubines), we could have the gift AND enrich plutonium. We made some weapons, let one go off, and hey we taught that Bush a lesson. I know you appreciate that.

So how about this, give us the aid, the peace treaty, pull your troops out of the south of Korea like we always wanted, and we’ll let you see all the facilities you have talked about. We will report how your aid money is being well spent and the Korean Central News Agency will report how the country is succeeding so well, like it did accurately since the 1950s.

Get the Japanese imperialists to give us compensation too, and hey we can all get together, and have a bomb. I mean, we’ll have destroyed that bomb, and reunited the country too.

Oh and can you make sure you send Trey Parker and Matt Stone to be your first ambassadors? I'm sure they'd like to meet the greatest film director in the world - me! I'd like to correct them on their depiction of my country at my special film production holiday camps.

Regards

General Secretary Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defence Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army

Able bodied lowlife on invalids benefits

Deborah Coddington in the Herald on Sunday outlines why the government should review every single recipient of the Invalid's Benefit. She talks of the mother of a murderer, who also happens to be a Mongrel Mob member, who verbally abused the wife of the deceased. Someone New Zealand taxpayers are forced to keep housed, fed, clothed, boozed and entertained.

As Coddington says, if the Greens call this beneficiary bashing, let them spend their own money on the likes of them. Good luck setting up the charity called "supporting the underclass trash who help destroy the lives of others".