A politician who understands

Sir Roger Douglas is showing his value as an MP, by opposing the government's economic "package" in words, although he is unlikely to vote against supply in the House. At the very least he isn't following the sheeple Keynesians who think there is one solution, when that medicine may prove to simply delay the inevitable economic realignment.

Stuff reports Douglas saying:

"When international credit is particularly tight, the Government has announced plans to borrow and spend on infrastructure projects.

"We have now been put on notice that our credit rating may be downgraded."

Sir Roger said New Zealand needed lower spending and lower taxes.

Unless both measures are adopted our children will have to pay back the borrowed money, and interest, in the future, he said.

"The Government is now mortgaging our children for the next round of spending increases."

Citizens have become more concerned with "dividing the pie rather than growing it" and politicians "merely mirror the sentiment" of voters.

He's right of course, but then he shows Bill English up so easily.

Douglas has a far more useful solution than spending your childrens' taxes:

He wants a tax system where an individual's first $30,000 would be tax-free, above that they would be taxed at a flat rate.

The flat rate, and company tax, would be reduced to 15 percent over the next 15 years.

Families with children would receive their first $50,000 tax-free with an increased tax-free threshold based on the number of children.

Families would be guaranteed a minimum income boosted by tax credits if they earned below the threshold.

The flip-side is that individuals would have to foot the bill for their own retirement, healthcare and insurance.

Yes amazing, low flat tax and you'd have to pay for healthcare and your retirement. Sadly though, most New Zealanders are too lazy, too scared and too much like children to want to actually be responsible for themselves.

The report shows a lack of understanding by the reporter, as Douglas says it would be optional to either go for his choice or pay taxes at the moment. THAT is where the real policy revolution should be.

Imagine that - pay the current taxes to access state health, education and promises of pensions OR opt out, get most of your income tax back and don't go crying to Nanny if you stuffed up.

You wont get it voting National.

Obama's big spendup

You’ll hear a lot about Obama’s print money package to stimulate the US economy by mortgaging on the taxes of people’s children. Curious how the left, which goes on endlessly about the suffering children and grandchildren will bear from the environment, doesn’t give a damn about subsidising the follies of imprudent borrowers and lenders with future taxes stolen from the unborn.

So what IS Obama offering? Well let’s start with the, apparent, good. Tax cuts. According to the Washington Post these are 22% of the package, although the Obama Administration claims it is 33%. Why the difference? Well because some of the cuts are tax credits given to people who pay no net taxes at all. That isn’t a tax cut, it’s welfare! I’ll be generous and say that the 22% is a good thing, it is good for the US Federal Government to take less money from people, but the rest? Well it is complicated, but who am I not to try to summarise it all:

The biggest lump is spending called “health, education and labor”. US$91.3 billion worth. It includes money to “renovate schools”, which I’d say the federal government shouldn’t own anyway. It also is money to the Department of Health and Human Services. This means subsidised healthcare, welfare programmes and a large number of other government “public health” initiatives. You might wonder how much of that is sucked into this huge bureaucracy, and indeed how much of the education spending isn’t just going to be absorbed by Obama’s unionised friends.

US$89.7 billion is boosting Medicaid temporarily, the socialised healthcare scheme for children of poor families, the disabled and other categories of low income people. Again, unlikely to stimulate the economy.

US$79 billion for the state fiscal stabilisation fund, essentially bails out states so they can keep spending money on education primarily. Again, unlikely to stimulate the economy.

US$62.3 billion for transportation, housing and urban development. Half is to build roads, but the US has an appalling system for deciding how to build roads. Politicians set priorities, so again this could be money down the plughole if unnecessary roads are built. The rest is public transport and housing assistance, again more money down the drain. The best housing assistance is the one provided by the deflating market.

US$48.9 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy systems, including subsidising electricity infrastructure. You might think there would be more efforts by individuals at energy efficiency if they paid themselves for the cost of core electricity infrastructure. Again another fundamental failing in how the US does infrastructure.

US$45.7 billion Essentially a boost to unemployment benefits.

US$40.8 billion Welfare so the unemployed can buy health insurance (don’t laugh, they’ll get better care than New Zealand or UK unemployed people using socialised medicine).

US$26.9 billion. Agriculture, nutrition and rural. More money for foodstamps (welfare) and subsidising broadband to rural areas. US$4.1 billion included for “rural development” whatever that means.

The rest are smaller (!) sums for all sorts of pork like:
- Improving national parks
- Improving water infrastructure (couldn’t just privatise it or run it commercially so users pay? No this is the United Socialist States of America)
- Science and technology grants.

All in all, change? Hardly, it’s just throwing money at bureaucracies to spend money like they always have done. No confrontation of why the Federal government thinks it should pay for water or electricity or education. No change to how transport is funded, just throw money at the bureaucracies that spend money where politicians think, while bridges collapse because there aren’t votes in maintenance.

Oh and investment? Yep there will be jobs, bureaucratic unproductive ones. They wont be jobs that are better than those created by people spending that money themselves. They wont be better than setting free the government regulated (and in most cases owned) power, water and road systems, which are America’s tribute to socialism in how badly they are all run.

Obama is just trying to kick the recession into the future again. His soundbite moment of capping chief executive pay for subsidised banks will be popular, and understandable, but he's pouring money down the fat pig laden hides of congressmen and women, state governors and others who leech off of the productive, and by and large show little interest in changing the USA to fix the most badly run parts of the economy.

Never mind that he never had any great new ideas for reform, his personality cult lives.

Prick of the week award goes to

Australian Environmaniac Bob Brown for claiming the deadly fires in Australia, partly because of arson are due to global warming, as reported by ABC Radio.

"Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25 per cent, 50 per cent more," he told Sky News. "It's a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change."

Way to help the victims Bob. Wouldn't be better to have as a priority catching arsonists, larger firebreaks, more responsive fire services? Nah, cycle to work instead of driving, it will really help the victims of the fires.

Notice the Australian Green Party website has a press release on the fires that doesn't express this viewpoint. You see, it didn't go down well to point score from other peoples' misery.

Of course the Guardian takes it all seriously, even though one expert it talks (Roger Stone, a climate expert at the University of Southern Queensland,) said: "It certainly fits the climate change models, but I have to add the proviso that it's very difficult, even with extreme conditions like this, to always attribute it to climate change." While also reporting the imminent blizzard conditions in the UK.

Don't let the facts get in a good story Bob, or you doing as much good for the victims of this disaster as pissing on the fire.

Maiden Speech 2: Rahui Katene: Te Tai Tonga

In order to give balance to reviewing the maiden speeches, I figured I'd try to alternate between opposition and government MPs. In this case, Rahui Katene is the Maori Party's new MP in 2008, taking Te Tai Tonga from Mahara Okeroa of Labour.

Her speech is here on Scoop in full.

Early in the speech is a statement that effectively says she is a Mormon ("That life of service to, and love of, others is a lesson well learnt as a member of my whanau, hapu and iwi, as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."). Of course she can believe what she wants, but frankly someone believing in a church founded by a relatively modern day fraudster deserves some ridicule (Christopher Hitchens has a short summary of the bizarre story behind this ridiculous church).

Beyond that most of the speech is about her family. Dad protested at Raglan, Bastion Point and at the Springbok tour. Mum went with the New Labour Party. Great stuff! Red flows in her veins in more ways than one. A minor error saying "as a University student I protested against the Springbok tour in 1986" which was the Cavaliers's tour of South Africa.

Unsurprisingly she is big on genetic identity "My politics have always been defined by my upbringing and my experiences as a Maori, a Maori woman and a mother of Maori children." Because, she understands the experience of not being one?? Of course most of the rest of her speech is about how she became a lawyer and part of the Treaty of Waitangi industry. Again, hardly surprising, but nothing outstanding out of this, beyond the strong alignment between who she is, and ethnicity.

Verdict? Well she has hardly a wide range of experience or exposure to different ideas of philosophies. She has been brought up by socialists, and matured in an environment of ethnically based nationalism. She believes in collective responsibility and " Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly".

You wont find an advocate of individual freedom here, you'll find socialism, nationalism, stirred with the mysticism of a loony church, but be grateful - she's not Kennedy Graham!

Maiden speech reviews: Kennedy Graham: control freak

Yep, I'm a bit late on these, so thought I'd better catch up. Starting with the far left of the House with Kennedy Graham, brother of ex. Cabinet Minister Doug Graham. However, whereas Doug went with the Nats (and had his proudest moment after the 1987 election when he admittedly wholeheartedly that National should have embraced the free market years ago) , Kennedy is a Green socialist.

Sadly reason isn't one of his fortes. Take this part of his speech:

"For ours is the first generation to confront problems of a planetary scale – daunting in their complexity, seemingly intractable in nature."

World War Two? Risk of nuclear annihilation? Those were past generations. Give up the dramatics.

"- As our human numbers increase, our earth-share diminishes."

A new piece of GreenNewSpeak. "Our earth share diminishes". Sounds like voluntary human extinction could help out.

"- As our materialistic lifestyle expands, our ecological footprint grows ever larger."

alone with our lifespan, our time for leisure, and opportunities for happiness, but fuck that right?

"Humankind today, casting precaution to the wind, is recording an ecological overshoot beyond the planet’s carrying capacity, anthropogenically inducing climate change of unprecedented magnitude and alarming danger."

Utter bollocks of course, since there has been far more dramatic climate change in human history than is even forecasts by the most pessimistic of major climate scientists.

"We are drawing down on Earth’s natural resources, borrowing forward on the human heritage, irretrievably encroaching on our children’s right to inherit the Earth in a natural and sustainable state. It is the uniquely dubious fate of our generation to have broken the eternal promise of inter-generational justice. "

Ah, "we" and "our", the words of the collectivist. The eternal promise of inter-generational justice? More Green NewSpeak, what the hell is he on about?

"We in New Zealand are part of the problem, not yet of the solution. Our ecological footprint is three times higher than the global average, our carbon emissions five times higher."

Dodging a definition, I assume he means per capita. Probably explained by this being a developed country Kennedy, of low density and high agricultural output. You could try North Korea which is almost certainly below average, or Equatorial Guinea, or how about Sudan? Yep they get up every morning glad they are your heroes.

" It is time we measured national success, not through mindless material growth but through genuine progress in human well-being"

It is time individuals measured their own success. Mindless material growth is it? So you tell people wanting to earn more that it is mindless? Ah genuine well-being, well go tell a trade union that they should give up material growth for their members.

"It is time we relinquished our feverish ranking within the OECD, and began contributing to the true advancement of the emerging global society"

Yeah man, let's drop down like Argentina once did, for the "emerging global society".

Vapid onanism par excellence so far. However, he's not just silly, he's downright dangerous. His speech took a far more ominous tone when he talks about individual freedom (emphasis added below)

"Sustainability is the supreme political value of the 21st century. It is not a concept of passing political expediency – a clip-on word for post-economic environmental damage. It is now the categorical imperative of personal behaviour. Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living. The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow."

Get it? The categorical imperative of personal behaviour is NOT "do no harm to others", it is not "obey the law", it is not "respect the bodies and property of others", it is "sustainability". Furthermore individual freedom is subordinate to the "twin principle of survival and sustainable living". Think how much freedom you can lose by this idiot pursuing "sustainable living" because he thinks this is more important than your political rights. Not a libertarian, possibly not even a democrat.

He waffles on about international commitments, worrying about tomorrow's children (sacrifice you and your current children though), and respecting all civilisations and faiths with due humility (yep the Taliban, the North Koreans, respect them all!).

He misquotes the UN Charter saying "Today, armed force may no longer be used by Member States save in the common interest". Bollocks, as every member state can use armed force for self defence, and the UN Security Council can authorise it against threats to international peace and security (and has done so). He wants it to be illegal for New Zealanders to commit aggression. By that he means war, which undoubtedly includes mercenaries. He doesn't mean himself and other politicians against New Zealanders, although the state is by its very nature aggressively initiating force every day. He undoubtedly wouldn't like mercenaries from New Zealand trying to overthrow any dictatorships, as he probably sees them as civilisations to respect.

So he's a fool and has the inklings of a fascist in his willingness to sacrifice freedom for "sustainability". He says "Generations gone before have sacrificed for our cherished freedoms – freedom of speech and association, freedom to practise our religions, freedom from want and freedom from fear" yet he is willing to sacrifice freedom for his religion of "sustainability", using fear of Nanny State to practice it.

For a man with several degrees, he has foolishly bought into the Green hysteria, the moral relativism of post-modern political philosophy, and is happy to sacrifice individual freedom for the new religion of environmentalism.

If he was just an airy-fairy hippie with silly optimism about the world he'd be harmless, but he worships sustainability over individual rights. He is, in other words, a rather dangerous man.