Mulholland Heft Meer Mmmmmmmm...

Stupid Hippies Help Jihadis Plan Terrorist Attacks

As I have said before, it is one thing to oppose an invasion of Iraq (which I did).  It is quite another to help the other side.

The GCSB plays a vital part in saving the lives of innocent people around the world.  Without them, it is certain  we would have more terrorist casualties.  And yes, they also help US soldiers hunt down and kill insurgents.  That's right, murdering, bloodthirsty, fundamentalists who send suicide bombers into busy Iraqi markets.  The GCSB has our backs and we should be kissing their arses on a daily basis.

That a bunch of IDIOTS claiming to be Christians wander onto the Waihopai base and attempt to sabotage this vital work, then kneel in prayer to thank Allah God for it, disgusts me.

Your God is not mine, and mark my words, your Prince of Peace will condemn you for this shameful act endangering so many lives.

UPDATE:

"The domes, made of a rubberised material, acted purely as a "waterproof jacket" to protect the antennae from adverse weather, he said."

It's good to know the GCSB are leading by example in covering their erections with a rubber.  :oP

Child Poverty Action Group: Only Their Purpose is Mad

The CPAG has released a set of goals to "end child poverty".  Whatever that means.  Let's look at them:

* Pledge to end child poverty by 2020.

What IS child poverty?  Personally I never felt like I got enough pocket money as a child.  Is that what they mean?  I'm sure there are poor parents out there, but child poverty seems a bit silly.  Is chimney sweeping not paying enough these days?

* Raise benefits and family support to 60 per cent of the net median household income, adjusted for family size.

This would be an act of economic genocide.  Unskilled labour would become completely uneconomical.  Large numbers of industries would be decimated.  Why 60%?  Why not 90%?!  What a foolish, ridiculous idea.

* Resurrect universal family benefit of $20 a week for all children under 5.

I've been wise enough not to have children yet.  Why should I be forced to pay for yours?

* Extend $60 a week income-tested in-work tax credit to all families with children.

As above.  But now you want to give it to people who sit around watching Oprah all day too?  Fuck off!  The Government doesn't pay for Sky for me, why should you have it?

* Cut the bottom tax rate to 10 per cent and/or extend the bottom tax bracket to $20,000.

Now this one is the only idea that I don't think goes far enough.  How about we dump the 15c rate entirely, as ACT are proposing?  One thing that actually will reduce poverty, not just cover it up.

* Extend free primary health care for children under 18 to after-hours clinics.

Another subsidy for breeding, all paid for by people who have not bred.  And doctors will likely make up the difference by charging adults more.

* Extend 20 hours free childcare to parent-led centres such as playcentres and kohanga reo.

If we are going to have 20 hours free childcare, I don't see why not.  But I disagree with blanket subsidised childcare.  If we offered it on a time-limited basis to DPB recipients who sought and attained employment, that would be a good idea, and save money in the long run.  But it is not my responsibility to pay for someone else's childcare needs.

* Abolish tax subsidies for KiwiSaver.

The Kiwisaver scheme is just a convoluted way of giving people tax cuts that they don't get until they are 65.  I support the idea of it in that I think it helps people get used to the idea of saving for their own retirement instead of expecting the government to just cough up when they reach a certain age.  But if you abolish the tax subsidies, the whole point of the scheme is defeated.  That would be silly.

Child Poverty is just a propaganda label for Poor Adults Who Don't Take Proper Care of Their Children.  The way you alleviate poverty is to cut taxes, reform welfare, abolish the Ministry of Education, and abolish the planning laws and RMA.  That won't eliminate poverty altogether, but it will allow everyone some breathing room to prosper.

Chutzpah

I'm amazed any journalist could write this with a straight face.

We are honoured to have Castro's brilliant mind on the case!  Fifty years of sound economic management has made him wise indeed!  But this quote from Chavez just takes the cake:

"His closest foreign ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, says Castro was way ahead in predicting the crisis and that the rest of the world is only now realizing that governments have to get involved to regulate the market."

Of course Hugo, those rumours that it was government intervention that got us into this mess in the first place are completely unfounded.  Since it's working so well for us, we clearly need more!

Communism is so 19th Century.  Get over it people.

The Bureaucratic Mindset

This sums it all up:

When flak over the logo started flying after the election and councillors refused to have the image on their business cards, Tania Perkinson vented her fury in an email to marketing manager Dale Clements.

"Quite frankly I think it is appalling that our own councillors do not endorse the logo of the council that they represent," she said.

The documents confirm the lengths executives went to to take ownership of the logo, which was only briefly shown to a handful of councillors and never put to a council committee.

Okay, so not only do the pencil-pushers sneak around behind the backs of our elected representatives spending our money, but they then present it to them as a fait accompli, then complain that the councillors are not represent them to the public properly.

Who is in charge here?  Us or them?

Hopefully it is us from now on.  We sent Banksy in there to give them a kicking, and thus far he has run a tight ship.  Long may it continue.

Sunday Nite Classix

I hate the song Imagine.  It annoys me when people sing it on solemn occasions as a song of hope.  As a man of faith, I find nothing hopeful about the song's atheism.  As a capitalist who believes that system (or lack of one) brings freedom and prosperity, I find nothing hopeful about the song's socialism.

Instant Karma! as an anthem is much better.  I think it's probably the best thing Lennon ever wrote.  It's a three minute summary of existentialism and it is, unlike Imagine, a song of Hope.

FAIL

Darwinism at work:

Police said the man had been drinking with friends at an 8th floor apartment, and talking about jumping into the harbour from the balcony.

However he fell short, landing on concrete near the edge of the wharf.

His body was found just before 4am this morning.

The man is understood to have been a 28 year-old from the North Shore.

Where is that drink taking you?

No, This Time It REALLY IS George Bush's Fault!

George Bush has been blamed for everything from hurricanes to (alleged) global warming itself.  But if you spray an AK47 around, eventually you'll hit something, and it looks like the current food crisis really is the fault of one George W Bush.

This is what happens when you make policy by focus group instead of doing what is right.  John Key take note.

Agricultural subsidies are the biggest killer in the world today.  New Zealand got rid of hers in the 1980s and has never looked back.  I weep to think how much less poverty there would be in the world if, instead of all the mindless protests against the WTO and government environmental policies, trendy activists focused on the lined pockets of US and EU farmers.  And now it's not just the poor who are suffering, it's all of us.

Can we get over this stupid focus on biofuels and global warming, and start feeding some people?

Mark Donnelly is a Bully

Mark Donnelly is the local City Councillor.  He also happens to live in the vicinity of New Zealand's largest sports stadium, forced to live there through poverty, no doubt.

He's now being a dick and trying to stop them redeveloping their own property in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

First of all, what an insane, backward country that would allow a man to do this.

Second of all, it's not like they're building a new stadium in a suburban area where Mark has hitherto lived in peace and tranquility for many years.  They're just developing a stadium that already exists.  It's not going to make traffic levels on match days any crazier than they already are, and already were long before Mark purchased his home prepared to make mischief.

Don't think me insensitive - I live in the area myself.  Roadside parking on match days is impossible to find, and traffic is a nightmare.  I hate it.  But unlike Mark, I don't whine about it.  It just doesn't happen frequently enough for it to be a problem.  And if it was, I wouldn't go crying to city planners, I'd just move.

Immediate neighbours often do have legitimate concerns about sensory and material pollution produced by adjacent property development.  But the sword of Damocles approach we have now is the wrong one.  All we need is legislation that:

1)  Requires notification of adjacent landowners within a certain radius of imminent property development;
2)  Allows compensation claims to a Property Development Tribunal for probable visual, aural, olfactorial or material pollution affecting adjacent landowners and their property.

That's it.  No RMA, no spiritual bullshit, no environmental jibberjabber, no shutting down or delaying development, no forms, no council planners, no bureaucrats, just two interested parties and a magistrate.  Mark Donnelly could seek recompense for increased noise and traffic, the judge would tell him to stop whining like a little bitch, and the temporary stand would get built.  End of story.  And meanwhile, the really stupid developments would get shut down, not because some stickybeaked lobby group started hyperventilating, but because paying people for blocking their views/disturbing their peace/stinking up their living rooms would be uneconomic.

Does Mark Donnelly really wish to be remembered by ratepayers as the man who moved the World Cup Final down to Christchurch?  Be assured Mr Donnelly I shall be reminding them of your actions in 2010.

National's Fibre Cable Policy

Maurice Williamson gets asked quite a few tough questions, and has some pretty reasonable answers:

He makes a very good case for the necessity of the network.  That isn't really in doubt.  I'm also fairly certain that it will be tax positive.  But at what opportunity cost?  Really what we want is 3% GDP growth by using $1.5B from shareholders, not taxpayers.

But this ain't going to happen of course, and Maurice only lightly touches on why.  He notes that small companies just get priced out by Telecom, so to stop that happening, it has to be a big player prepared to roll it out.  Now... why wouldn't that happen?  Why on earth I wonder... oh yeah, maybe it's because the last time a major company had their own telco network in this country IT GOT UNBUNDLED!

So there's your answer right there.  They won't do it because the government will just confiscate it.  They also need all that bureaucratic RMA paperwork done on it.  It's a nightmare for anyone in the private sector.  Who would ever invest in telco infrastructure in New Zealand?

All up, it's a tough one.  You really need to abolish the RMA and have a constitutional guarantee to property rights to get this thing built by itself.  Realpolitik suggests that won't happen in the short to medium term.  So National's policy is simply a mop-up for having poor property rights in this country in the first place.  It's an acknowedgement that only the State can build this thing, because right now if anyone else does, the State would probably steal it.  The State fucked up, and now only the State can fix it.  That sucks.

So what can we do?  It's like universal scholarships for schools - the policy, in itself, if you were constructing a nation-state out of thin air, is ridiculously wrong.  But we live under a regime of virtual state monopoly in education, with zoning and bureaucracy to boot.  So universal scholarships represent a vast improvement.  That's what a PPP fibre network is - not a pure answer, but a vast improvement on the stalemate wrought by the government's own past actions.  We can whine about this policy, hope for an ACT/Libertarianz government to fix it and live in the equivalent of a cyber-stone-age in the meantime, or... we can suck it up and build the thing.  It's a nasty rat to swallow, but I think practicality may well demand we do it and support National's initiative, at least just this once.

ANZACs=Waffen SS? WTF?!

If Auckland was one of those quaint Suthun' towns, Psycho Milt would have been mobbed with torches and pitchforks and lynched from the nearest tree by now.

I'm not sure it's possible to be more offensive in this country.

I can't think why anyone would want to share a group blog with this idiot after this despicable comparison and moral equivocation.  Many of us had relatives who served their country and Psycho Milt just compared them to a bunch of barbaric, murdering pogromistas.  Well fuck you Milt.  You owe all of these great men a sincere apology.