No Better Place to Die: Reframing the CGT debate

Who brings a knife to a gun fight?

In a week where the public had two different flavors of hysteria to choose from (that being China or the CGT) it was disappointing, yet expected, to see the debate rise and fall on such simple terms that statements from quisling traitors like Simon Bridges, and many of the useful idiots in the media, were nothing above the kind of statements found in the average comments section online with Bridges calling it a "kick in the guts" for middle NZ.

Still, its expected to see Simon playing the fear card because at this point he might as well with his credibility as leader shot and the party trying to figure out how to remove him without treading the same doom-laden path as Labour once did.

But Bridges, like a drowning man, has clutched at the first thing that came his way and he probably feels like the CGT is the perfect vessel to keep himself, and his leadership hopes, afloat until election 2020 but such is his mind now that going all out with frothing fear mongering statements in the media, sorta like Donald J Trump with his comments about Mexicans being "criminals and rapists", is treading a dangerous path.

"Yes, its true, the CGT is going to climb in your bedroom window one night, tie and gag you before raping your hard earned capital gains while you watch in mute, bug eyed horror, at the unfolding terror of all that retirement income being stripped away from you until you have nothing left and your forced to live in some dingy rest home (possibly owned by some ex All Blacks) for the rest of your miserable life."*

Its a shocking thought I know but that's the power of fear and its the nightmare that only a well paid mouth piece, like Simon (or Fox News) could spin with a straight face but in the age of FukYoo Politix Simon probably thinks this is his Orewa Speech moment where he taps directly into the twitching nerves of "middle NZ" and rides the shuddering spasm all the way into the Beehive.

Funny thing about fear though, is that its an irrational impulse and not one subject to much control, specially in the minds of the public, so Bridges might have started something but there is no guarantee that he will remain in charge once the fear machine gets rolling.

Today NZ has a growing wealth disparity, with simple things like a home becoming more and more out of reach for "Middle NZ" and people living in cars or being housed in motels as emergency accommodation and with no prospect of things getting better Simon hoping to tap into their sentiments is like skydiving without a parachute.

But whats done is done and lets not dwell on it for too long because Bridges is clearly consumed with his own fears, that of not being leader for much longer, so like a headless chicken running around screaming the sky is falling, Simon is clearly externalizing his own deep seated fears rather than making any rational debate.

However, while its fun to point at laugh as Simon has (pardon my French) merde son pantalon de grand garcon, the CGT is a genuine attempt to address the issues of growing inequality in NZ and deserves a better level of debate than the one its getting.

Maybe its not the best way to fix things, but that's a debate for another day, whats important here is if you asked most Kiwis if they wanted NZ to have a growing inequality and gap between the rich and the poor, and with the majority being the poor, they would say "hell no!"

So far so simple but if you pressed a bit further and asked what they themselves would do about it, like say pay more tax, or loose their home, few, if any would agree to it. And thats the fear that Simon is hoping to tap into by phrasing the debate in such scary (and misleading) terms.

However, as the gap gets bigger and bigger and more people start piling up on the loosing side of the inequality equation, start to see no real increase in wages and, horror of horrors, the value of their homes decrease (its happening in Oz, will happen in China soon and is going to happen here) fear is going to drive people to vote for the biggest, craziest, person who will promise to end their fears and dish out a healthy dose of retribution to the thieving assholes who stole their future (read the Rich and National).

So question time darlings: do you think Simon Bridges will be the one that people are going to trust to quench their fears when the skeletal hand of poverty, homelessness and starvation reaches out for them?

If you said yes then good on you for being an honest, if misguided, National Party supporter (or at least the part that still likes Simon Bridges) but the chances of Bridges being able to ride the Chaos Tiger into office when the PMs job is up for grabs is down to single digits (just like his poll ratings) so watch your back Simon.

While if you said no well done for not being fooled by his lies but shame on you for still framing the debate at the level of fearmongering.

Inequality in NZ will either be fixed or it will grow and when things get crunchy nobody is going to be trusting Simon Bridges to lead them out of the maze when he is the one of the criminal cyphers that lead them in.

However, on the flip-side of things, Jacinda Ardern and Labour are going to have to make a decision about whether to do what some are calling political suicide or asking if "this a hill worth dying on?"

The answer to that question is yes, yes it is.

To be fair, the CGT was never going to be an easy sell and calling it something more palatable like the Simon Bridges Rich Asshole Tax would probably go a long way to soothing the public's pulsating fear glands, as most of the public in NZ (including most National supporters) do not consider themselves to be "rich assholes" so if posed as such most would happily get behind seeing those "poncy bastards" suffer.

And if you want a fairer NZ then you may not want a CGT but call it by any other name and you would be behind it 100%, you know you would. Its either that or you come up with some actionable suggestions for rolling back the growing sludge of poverty and inequality in NZ.

What you don't have any suggestions? How surprising! Somehow I did not think you would but thats ok because in the end the answer is simple: Tax the Rich! Make them pay their fair share!

And thats just what the CGT is once you scrape the maggots of fear (helpfully sprinkled by Simon Bridges) away. The CGT will be a step towards equality. It might not fix everything but its a start and it will do so by taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.

Meanwhile, as for that "hill" question the answer is in the title of this post because if Labour doesn't go though with it then predictions of electoral defeat gloated about by China Spokesperson and part time National party MP Judith Collins, may just come true as after Labour fell back on hills like Kiwibuild and Budget "responsibility" there are not many hills left to stand on. Just the flat open plains of mismanagement, muddling and mediocrity where their is no moral high ground and Labour can easily be outflanked on issues.

But if it comes down to Labour going into battle but being back-stabbed by Winston Peters at the critical moment then so be it as that would likely not save them anyway if caught in the path of the runaway, blood spattered, combine harvester that is fear.

Because what got them [Labour] elected in the first place was an unspoken promise to fix things like inequality, to make NZ a better place (as trite as that can sometimes sound), and the ongoing worry of National doing noting (and promising nothing) but more of the same inequality enhancing policies mixed in with abject outburst of fear which will eventually be the trigger that truly unleashes the FukYoo beast on NZ politics.

CGT is not quite Brexit for NZ in its scope but the choice is just as stark and if Labour looses then it was a brave last stand of the idea that Aotearoa can have a fair and equal society where the rich can be rich but not at the expense of the everyone else. Because if no CGT then what else is there?

Still Simon is going to continue his squawks of fear but the louder he squawks the more clearer it is that he is in the pay of those wealthy few who don't want to pay their fair share, who dont want to see NZ prosper because it means they would get less than they greedily have now. However if Simon wants to sell his soul to the devil and whore his backside to China for dollars thats his business but the very clear subtext of his message is "screw you guys I got mine, sorry about yours!"

If it was me I would simply declare a national emergency, have anyone over a certain income threshold taken away in buses to be housed in rat hole motels before being brought before a hastily convened "tax court" which would summarily strip them of ALL their wealth as punishment for their capital gains and then send them on their way, to sleep in the back of a crappy rusted out car.

So its probably a good thing that I am not in charge but that's because I don't speak for the today, I speak for the tomorrow, or more correctly the tomorrow of FukYoo Politix where Simon got his way, rode the fear into the PMs seat and then did nothing while NZ continued to rot away and then it got so bad that people stopped voting for the sane or even the reasonable, fled to the margins, and elected their own populist demagogue who promised to end the fear by their own "10 point plan"** to fix things.

Or even worse they stopped voting and just sought to change things by hanging a few of the rich or rioting in the street (a popular pastime in France now) because it became clear that no government would do anything so f**k it lets have a riot!

See, I can play the fear card as well and its much bigger and nastier than Simon's.

This is why Simon Bridges summoning fear in the popular mind is not a smart move, its an incredibly short term and very risky strategy that will do nothing but buy him some time to save his own ass but doom the country to more, and worse, of the same inequality issues that we have now.

Thanks Simon, thanks a bunch!

If Labour was to push the CGT, fail on the issue and either loose the next election or win and then muddle on doing little else then its a hard to decide which is the worse option but most people would rather they fought the good fight (rather than just trying to save their own political careers) as its an issue which is worth fighting, and politically, dying for.



*-Hypothetical statement from Simon Bridges.
**-Just Google "10 point plan" and see how many people have had one.

Standing up to China: The real reason National is tanking and Labour is up in the polls

Ok you primitive screwheads listen up!

So its political poll time again and holy hells bells look at those results, really look at them and tell me what you see.

Yes thats right Labour up, National Down, the Greens slipping and NZ First plunging into well below the 5% threshold in what looks suspiciously like what happened two months before the last general election when Jacinda Ardern blitzkreiged the opposition via the polls and then later on at the polling booth.

And lets put the mechanics of these movements aside for the moment and take a look at how this has been reported in the media or more importantly how this is being reacted to in the media.

Firstly we have Stuff which delivers the bad news via Henry Cooke in rather succinct and factual terms while noting the steaming pile of issues that Kiwibuild and the Karel Sroubek scandal were BUT without directly drawing the obvious conclusion that despite these two very damaging situations Labour has come out the other side with a jump in polling.

Then we have Tracy Watkins, also of Stuff, delivering a rather tepid opinion piece which tantalizingly hints at what may actually be going on behind the scenes but ends up with a lot of overly dramatic sentences or questions which state the obvious (such as "is it time for National to panic?") without really delivering any of the juicy analysis promised.

Meanwhile over at the NZ Herald "political commentator" Bryce Edwards does his usual plagiarist cut and paste job of other peoples work in his latest political roundup which is just sooooo lazy that I genuinely wonder why the Herald employs him and why he does not just make a list of links he wants us to read rather than desperately trying to add value to them by clumsily inserting his usual summary of things.

For Kiffloms sake Bryce, I have heard you speak on Radio NZ and its clear you have both a brain and opinions so why cant you just put these tedious lists to bed and tell us what you actually think, sheesh!

Then there is Audrey Young, also of the NZ Herald, doing just that by stating that its way too early for the knives to come out for Bridges. Well at least its her own opinion and not just a five minute list making exercise which makes its all the more a pity that shes completely and utterly wrong! Not only are the knives out they have been out for months but are held in "stasis" by a certain factor we will get into soon.

So lets check out the blogsphere shall we, perhaps there is more wisdom to be had there.

Over at National party supporting Kiwiblog, David Farrar, is, expectedly, talking things down and doing damage control by explaining this away as some sort of summer "bump" in polling because the PM was out at Davos and saying he will be "more interested in the next poll" but pausing just long enough to not the potential exit of both NZ First and the Greens in the next election based on the current polls.

Well at least its more analysis than the mainstream media but David is just being disingenuous by making it out that Kiwis cared about Jacinda headlining at Davos to be the real reason for the jump Labour has made (and the related decline of National) because this poll is also coming out in the period of the afore mentioned Sroubek and Kiwibuild muck-ups so you would think pressing issues more close to home would negate any temporary spin from mingling with the globalist elite for a few days.

Meanwhile no mention either way over at Norightturn but with the end of the Saudi Sheep Deal, climate change and NZ's open government being rated as marginal perhaps dear old Idiot Savant has other things to report on, maybe, maybe not, but its absence is noted. However as this is one of the better political blogs out there I am prepared to let it pass this time.

But aha, whats this I spy, its the Pundits Tim Watkin noting that the whole thing was "inevitable" and describing Judith Collins as the "complicating factor". Really Tim? Really? But Tim speaks some truth when he notes that its "a long way till the next election" but like all the other examples here there is almost no real analysis of whats gone on and playing the "its inevitable" card is the journalistic equivalent of Deus Ex Machina.

The sun coming up is inevitable, death and taxes are inevitable and given your half baked attempt at describing whats gone on as "inevitable" so is my opinion of your post as a "lazy hack job" inevitable, and you can quote me on that.

And finally over at The Daily Blog we get Martyn Bradburys usual take on things which given his political views, is that view is Bridges is a "dead man walking" which is not new and I could have told him that in October last year with my Dead Party Walking post.

But even Martyn, who can usually be relied upon to make schadenfreude entertaining rounds, out his post with the usual warnings about Judith Collins like she is the political boogeyman and how "right-wing pundits will pray this is rouge" with "rouge" being the polls result and not Collins going bezerek in a cabinet meeting.

Yet even in the Fifth Estate the takeaway on this poll result is way off and while mindful of my previous wisdom about political polls I think its time to set the record straight on why here and now after over 12 months of consistent polling, consistent rumblings of leadership challenges and things like Jamie-Lee Ross that only now is National getting hit in the one thing that has previously been unassailable and was its bedrock of both party discipline and future fortune: Nationals (some say magical) 46% party polling.

And just over a year ago I was pointing out that sooner or later that 46% was going to slip in my series of posts about rehabilitating the National Party but no one was listening then so just for once I am going to say "I told you so" because, unlike Tim Watkins saying saying its inevitable after the fact (easy thing to do Tim), I was saying it was inevitable 12 months ago when there was absolutely no indication that it would drop and in fact was defying all expectations in the post election enviroment.

But lets get to the real question about why it has dropped now.

Conventional wisdom is that its been that gosh-darned Jamie-Lee Ross and his damaging effect on National party polling and moral.

However that makes no sense because the previous Colmar Brunton poll showed absolutely no change to that magical 46% and that was taken right in the eye of the storm that was Ross saga and with the public having full view of the buildup of things in the months before so explaining this away due to Jamie-Lee Ross is just idiotic.

But there is a connection to Jamie-Lee Ross and National getting mugged in its polling and that is the revelation that National MP Sarah Dowie was the person telling Ross to kill himself via text which has not gone down well with the public despite a cabal of certain female National MPs, staffers and some in the media trying to paint her as the victim in the piece while Ross got characterized as the rapist in waiting.

As I have said in previous posts its takes two to tango but Dowie, in an age where that kind of behavior is absolutely not acceptable, went well beyond the fold.

With things like #meetoo and the review on bullying and harassment in parliament Dowie gets exposed as just as bad as any misogynistic male MP who thought that their position or name made them safe and as such its rather fitting that she not only get investigated by the Police but if found to be the sender of that text (and we all know it was her but let the system do its job) then she be cast out of parliament because if it had been Ross (or any other male MP doing such a thing) they would have been gone as of yesterday and the public views on the matter reflected that.

So some splinters of the Jamie-Lee Ross saga have done some damage here but it was always minor and in the end Bridges exercised some degree of damage control, even if only after the fact, by not talking about Ross any further but it was certain parties in the media who sought to paint this in a rather jaundiced light (as described above) that made the backlash there what it was. But still this was not what brought National down.

What about things like the Kiwibuild saga toppling over spectacularly in the early new year or the rancid stink from the Karel Sroubrek scandal that left Labour, Jacinda and Ian Lees-Galloway looking like a king sized hypocrites; shouldn't have those things had some effect in leveling out the poll result?

Well yes they should have and they probably did but when in the context of National selling citizenship to right-wing billionaire Peter Theil and its nurturing of the toxic and cancerous Housing Hernia one foreign drug dealer and a flawed but honest attempt to fix said hernia fall very rapidly into perspective as minor moments rather than deliberate and dishonest politics.

Thus we come to the real reason that National is down in the polls, or more correctly, Labour is up: Standing up to China.

Sure National scare-mongered it up as much as they could but in the end the current government saying no to Huawei for the 5G deal was the right thing to do and Simon Bridges going on TV to moan that New Zealands relationship to a country that is not free, democratic, jails it citizens for no reason, censors their internet, will risk war for its own stupid pride and will happily turn back an Air New Zealand flight due to accidentally mentioning Taiwan is not going to wash.

And that's it, that's the reason why after so long and so much Labour is finally up in the polls; because it made the most ethical decision so far of this government AND followed it through with action. If Labour could do this for things like tax, housing and all the rest Kraff knows where it and National would be polling but I cant imagine that National would be above the mid 20s.

National has been in China's pocket for so long (as Chinese spy Jin Yang is still a member of the party) that National probably don't even realize how distasteful being seen as a quisling is but Ross's recording of Bridges talking treason/sedition on behalf of China is one of the great scandals that the media just don't have the stones to investigate but the public no longer remain comfortable with China as our largest trading partner and using its size and leverage to undermine our democracy though it infiltration of politics both here and abroad.

Thus with National out of government China is no longer getting a free ride and that means that we may still trade with them but we wont be offering up our backsides for China's pleasure.

Something to note also here is that this was not some side effect of Jacindamania, the PM tried to stay well out of it and in the end it fell on Andrew Little, the GCSB and the Five Eyes relationship to see this through and for a public that had been desperately waiting for the government to fire on something and hit a six this was the first time it did since the first 90 days and look what happened.

Supporting this is the minimal movement in preferred PM polling (with Jacinda and Judith slightly up and Simon slightly down) showing that the movement in the party polling is not related to personality politics but rather it was solely an issue which drove this change.

Of course Judith Collins is now polling Higher than Simon Bridges and Bridges definitely has something to worry about but when has he not had to worry about his position as leader. As I have stated before its the toughest job in politics so unless he was harnessing personal mojo like Jacinda Ardern or John Key he was never going to be stroking it big all over the electorate in the preferred PM stakes.

All of this means that while Judith is polling higher she has not dethroned Bridges, yet, but she has out evolved him and that means no slick PR is going to take Simon any higher than he has been and his stock is now falling.

Also that "stasis" effect we have around who will be next leader of National in relation to jolly Judith Collins is due to the high degree of doubt around not only Bridges as being the man for the job but also Collins being the woman for the job (despite her repeated protestations that she does not want it: Your fooling nobody Judith!).

Bridges may not yet have the toxic cast that Bill English had roughly one year ago but as I mentioned late last last year the warranty on his time as leader "has expired" and that view came after I spent an evening speaking with moderate/centrist young Nats and listening to their views on who should be leader.

Short answer to the long question: They don't know who should lead but they sure as heck know it shouldn't be Bridges or Collins.

Nor should it be Paula Bennett, as her recent demotion to drugs "spokesperson" and subsequent beating by Chloe Swarbrick live on national TV showed that Bennett's limited intellect and long history of hypocrisy make her unsuitable to even be deputy leader let alone as some sort of vocal mouthpiece on an issue such as drug reform.

In fact if there is a moral to this story for National it was they should have taken my advice last year ago when I said that for Bridges to succeed as leader he needed to get rid of retched golems like Bennett, Brownlee, Smith and Collins (the remainders of the Gang of Five) and remake the upper party to his own design by letting some younger blood in.

And what a difference that would have made if only Jamie-Lee Ross would have been prevented from going bezerk by giving him the position promised to him by Bridges rather than to corpulent bully-boy Gerry Brownlee.

But its too late now and it does not matter if its Bridges or Collins at the helm of the ship as all Labour has to do is use their position as the government of the day to make a few more things real and you can watch that 41% slide into the 30s and down into the 20s to that place National was in before John Key seduced the party.

So thats the real reason why the poll results are what they are but there is no need to thank me. I do this because I care.


Vootie!

Aces High: Chloe Swarbrick guns down Paula Bennett in a drug fueled argument live on national TV!

"I don't want to know who you use, as long as they're not complete muppets." - Hatchet Harry in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

In all the made-up controversy about Jamie-Lee Ross and whats her name last week many people may not have noticed that the first shots were fired in the debate over cannabis reform when Chloe Swarbrick, Green Party drug reform spokesperson, hammered National Party mouthpiece, former hash-house waitress and dole bludger Paula Bennett, for her wishy-washy stance on the issue while both were being interviewed on Breakfast TV.

But don’t just take my word for it go watch the clip and see for yourself a serious piece of foreshadowing of the upcoming national debate about legalizing the sweet leaf because if Bennett is going to remain Nationals spokesperson (wait let me put that in quotation marks) “spokesperson” for drug reform then two things are immediately apparent:

1. Paula Bennett has no idea what she is talking about, and 
2. Simon Bridges move of Bennett to the “new” portfolio of drug reform was similar to John Key sending Gerry Brownlee to Defense; ie to get the dead wood out of sight where it can’t do any damage

Well a fat doobies lot of good that did as Bennett's appearance with some bottle blonde talking head on morning TV came across from the start as world championship level political gibberish as she mush mouthed her way though the intro with a pasted-on smile while waffling factually ambiguous dialog that used as many words as possible to say as little as possible.

And Swarbrick knew it.

Bennett used two sentences to state the obvious by telling the viewers already knew; that there was a referendum on the matter, that it was binding and that it was a “big move for the country” which is absolute rubbish when half the country is likely to be smoking the stuff.

But its that third sentence that slid out of Bennett’s mouth which shows where Nationals debate plan is going and that Paula had been heavily coached to vomit out a set of talking points by saying that she wanted “all of the arguments out on the table” and that people “are looking at the evidence” before uttering the kind of line that no “spokesperson” should ever utter and that spin doctors dread when she almost proudly stated that she “did not have all the answers” but she would like them before she voted.

After that it was all downhill and I won’t bore the readers with a play by play but it’s worth watching to see Bennett fielding softball style questions from the peroxide talking head and then carefully regurgitating the kind of moralistic platitudes which were just a hare short of simply screeching “wont somebody please think of the children!” if only to remember why watching political debate via breakfast television is a bad idea.

But its there at about the 1.50 mark when Bennet’s yap stopped and Swarbricks attack started.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not rooting for Swarbrick, the Greens or cannabis reform but right from her opening line you could tell something was going to happen when she [Swarbrick] said she wished she was in the studio so she could shake Paula’s hand, which is an incredibly queer thing for a politician to say about or to another politician, let alone a normal human being because you only ever say that you want to shake a person’s hand when you:

1. Genuinely want to shake their hand (and then immediately proceed to do so), or
2. Are taking the piss out of them with a backhanded compliment

And I don’t think that Swarbrick would ever want to touch Bennett let alone maintain some kind of skin contact for the time needed to shake her hand, but I digress.

After that the whole interview played itself out like this: 

• Bennett mouths some sort of feeble cliché-ridden platitude, and
• Swarbrick exposes Bennett as nothing but an empty head dispensing other people’s grotesque thoughts and lies with reason, logic and facts

It was like watching Rafael Nadal playing a French open grand slam match against a wheelchair bound, mentally disabled, cripple child as every single stupid statement that Bennett oozed out of her perpetually grinning mouth was blasted back at her with terrible force and just a touch of patronizing voice tone to make clear that Swarbrick knew that Bennett was nothing more than an empty, thoughtless vessel doing evil work.

Bennett going into the debate probably thought she would just repeat what her brain coach had made her say 15 or 20 times while waiting in the Green Room before going on and hey presto her work as drug reform spokesperson would be done for the day.

Well it didn’t play out like that and the contrast between the old, tired and corrupted Bennett and the young, hungry and astute Swarbrick was hideously obvious.

You would almost think that Swarbrick knew in advance what Bennett was going to say given her responses but what I think is more likely is that Swarbrick has a brain and did her homework while Bennett did not do her homework and was left with nothing to say but more of the same talk about getting a “balanced argument” which in political terms means muddying the water just enough to sow confusion and doubt in the minds of voters so that the old political instincts kick back in and they vote along party lines rather than on their own personal preference.

And on an issue like drug reform this kind of disingenuous approach is needed because its an issue that is not politically partisan as its not just Green Party members which buy a tinnie, roll a doob, get the munchies and macramé their ass into the sofa but around half of the country (or more) so trying to enforce the party line would not work.

Not that Paula did not try by cramming in some tough talking, anti-crime comments which would have sounded good coming from the mouth of Judith Collins but from Bennett just sounded like the kind of emergency talking point you pull out of your sweaty ass when the debate has gone south and you know your lost but don’t want to look like you just got kicked around like a pair of cheap women’s shoes.

And this is where the comparison between Bennett, an aged long-time recipient of state welfare and free education turned political hypocrite and mindless cog in the National Party machine, and Swarbrick, a young, astute businesswoman turned politician showed most clearly.

Nothing Bennett said sound like an original thought while Swarbrick always seemed one (well actually several) steps ahead and the whole agonizing nine-minute segment ended with Swarbricks final coup-de-grace statement that labelled Bennett’s behavior a “cynical political move”, again delivered in that slightly patronizing Epsom Grammar tone of voice, while Paula’s face went from Resting to Seething in under three seconds.

Now we all know that all politics is essentially a “cynical move” but when it comes to two sides intellectually duking it out over an issue such as cannabis people tend to go with the side that makes the most sense and Bennett, with her essentially pointless middle ground mush, did not make sense and this is why Swarbrick labeling her position cynical did make sense and resonated.

The Green party has kept a low profile after its beating at the last election and James Shaw (now looking more and more like a middle tier Bond villain in both face and dress) has done nothing to show any leadership but if Swarbrick can keep on this path, she could easily out Jacinda Jacinda and be the first ever Green PM; she was that good!

Her performance alone was not enough for me to forgive the Greens and vote for them again but it was enough to make me reconsider the doomed course that Shaw has steered the party with its disastrous decent into social activism and identity politics but only if Swarbrick can get Shaw’s hand off the steering wheel.

However its painfully clear that Bennett is on the way out politically and Swarbrick is on the way up.

Bennett, in her "new" role as drug reform "spokesperson", is being put out to pasture, just like Brownlee and Mcully were before while Swarbrick is obviously keen to make some political capital by tearing strips off the back of  an easy target  that the aging political neanderthal Paula Bennett is.

Also as Bennett is part of the Gang of Five (Brownlee, Smith, Collins, Joyce and Bennett) so her legacy is little more than a walking, talking reminder of why we currently have Jacinda Ardern as PM as Bennett has never been more than a political brown-shirt for National and as such is subject to the same fate as all stooges and lackeys when regime change occurs.

Political antics aside, my own personal thoughts on cannabis reform is that unless the drug is regulated in the same way that gambling is in NZ (ie the money raised from it* only goes back to the community) and that the discussion about alcohol is brought into line with it then I would see it decriminalized but not legalized as if you can have big tobacco and big booze you can have big marijuana (and their attendant health and social problems that these vested interests foster in the name of profits).

Final thought is that if Swarbrick can keep this up the debate will be over before its starts and its clear that Bennett has been sent on a suicide mission (by Simon Bridges no less) as the means to justify her sooner or later removal from the National party.

And I am cool with both things.

*-excepting casinos of course

Jamie-Lee Ross, Sarah Dowie, Tracy Watkins and the hypocracy of #MeThree

Well there I was happily beavering away on a blog post about the current crop of democratic hopefuls for the 2020 US election when I was rudely dragged away from my labor by the sound of squabbling from the "children's room".

So I rose wearily from my desk, padded down the hall and gingerly pushed open the door to the a place I have come to dread: New Zealand politics.

Immediately the smell of urine and feces assaulted my nostrils while the shrill cacophony of sobbing and snarling dug into my ears. And the sight that sprawled before me was little better; it was clear there had been another incident in the special needs class and its was time for clean up in aisle five.

And there is a lesson to be learnt for those considering having an extra-marital affair with a co-worker and that lesson is: don't f**king do it!

Its all right there in the lyrics to Kenny Rogers 1977 hit song Daytime Friends (Nighttime Lovers) where he sings:

And when it's over, there's no peace of mind
Just a longin' for the way things should have been
And she wonders, why some men never find
That a woman needs a lover and a friend.

Call Ross a misogynistic and brutal lover all you want but it takes two to tango, or make the beast with two backs, and both parties to this tsunami of political diarrhea are responsible for what its become. 

Ross, obviously, brought this into the public space when he strapped on his recordings of him and Simon Bridges talking treason and ran screaming into a press conference like a jihadi suicide bomber to detonate his payload in front of the cameras in spectacular fashion.

 And amid the screams and body parts raining down we find out that whats at the core of this is less one man concerned about his party, or its leader, being so filled with corruption that its leaking out at every orifice but instead its a far older chestnut, that of a being cut out of his own slice of the greasy money pie so in revenge he turns stool-pigeon and starts ratting out the other criminals.

Then of course we have Simon Bridges and his relentless stuff ups over the leaking of his travel records, which is still not actually attributable to Ross (and Nationals own report said so) but what the heck, let just go with it.

But the trigger for all this is his and Sarah Dowie's illicit relationship which, like more than a few work place relationships, could not bear up under the strain or the guilt of cheating and lying (to their partners of course, not the public, as politicians have no qualms about that) and splintered into the inevitable backbiting, name calling and one particular toxic, and illegal text from Dowie to Ross to "kill himself".

Well she almost got her "wish" but instead Ross decided to go rouge and publicly expose the National party, and Simon Bridges in particular, and in doing so has given the Coalition government a free pass for as long as it takes to clean this mess up.

Whats clear of course is that there is still more to this story that what we are seeing but its also clear that its most likely 99% petty personalities and bitchy backstabbing in the wake of a broken love affair and all the garbage has just been funneled through the already toxic sewer that is the National party to produce something akin to Kedal Jenners politics fail than what this is being presented as (that being news we really need to know about).

However, as much as Ross was a deluded idiot who let his own scumbag ambitions override what little political judgement he had and Dowie should have listened to Kenny (or just remembered the old adage of "don't screw the crew") before going over to the bitchy side of the force (because both of these twerps were more than happy to play hide the salami while also playing married with children) the real hypocrite of this story is the media and specifically Tracy Watkins of Stuff who while writing repeated stories decrying the behavior of MPs has then decided to paint Ross as the monster and Dowie as some sort of innocent victim in some sort of vicarious #MeToo moment (making it really #MeThree I suppose) rather than hold to some sort of journalistic integrity in her reporting.

Watkins more than implies that Ross is the political Machiavelli who has maneuvered and manipulated the situation to his own advantage with lines like:

Let’s not pretend this isn’t exactly what Jami-Lee Ross wanted. He’s spent the summer lying low, and his return to Parliament was always on the cards. When he did stage his comeback, he needed to take ownership of his role in destroying a number of innocent parties, and offer a genuine apology. That apology fell far short of acceptable and he’s back up to his old tricks.

Reading that we can only imagine that Jamie-Lee Ross as some sort of Scooby Doo villain who,when his dastardly deeds are exposed, would saying something like "...and I would have got away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!" when exposed by her obviously brilliant journalistic exposé.

Bravo Tracy, bravo.

Her entire piece in the Sunday Star is well within the realm of the worst of tabloid journalism and not only implies that Ross is playing the mental health card (because its clear to her what a real mental health crisis is and what is fake) but also doing her best to cast doubt on the fact that it was Dowie sending the "killer" text that set this whole avalanche of corruption, ego and avarice in motion (because we always let other people send hate filled (and illegal) texts from our phones) in a some of her worst reporting to date.

But the articles ultimate in hypocracy lies in this line here which, I hope, can only have been written as some form of semi aware ironic meta to how airing ones dirty laundry in public is never a good thing.

 

He did it in the full knowledge of the law, and how the media has to work.

Tracy: if Ross did what he did in "full knowledge" of how the media works so also did you write your many articles covering this abortive distraction to actual political matters in "full knowledge" of "how the media has to work", as if political reporters have to give legitimacy to these kind of sleazy soap opera antics because what else could they do. 

Seriously, if you want to take the moral high ground it looks a lot better if you wash the filth off your own hands first; filth you collected by giving this story as much traction as its has gotten by relentlessly covering it as you have, not by focusing on the actual mess the National party has gotten into but with your relentless exposure of gossipy aspects of this story, turning it from the grubby, but all too human sideshow it was (because in the end both Ross and Dowie are human too and workplace relationships happen) to your own personal #MeeThree crusade via your depressing slide into tabloid muck-raking.

You don't get to have the moral high ground when your writing this kind of swill and failing to do your job, if you want to be a gossip columnist thats fine but stop pretending this is politics and not you playing town gossip.

Also for the love of Kraff save the identity politics for where they are relevant, turning marital infidelity into a cheap morality play for the victim generation is just exposing your own agenda as a far less than objective journalist and more as a partisan agitator playing rumor monger. Surely there were other stories to write about or have you gotten so close to those you cover that your now unable to report just the facts.

Such behavior makes you look not only as an ultra hypocrite but also like someone who would be better suited as the high school drama queen, the journalistic equivalent of Helen Lovejoy, constantly saying "I'm not one to gossip" before unleashing your own moral take on actions which are not morally defensible, those being Dowie unleashing verbal and emotional violence via text, just as mach as Ross blaming his behavior all on his mental health.

If Ross gets hung out to dry by this, and he will in time, so should Dowie, she's not a victim here and in a week where the real political stories are Simon Bridges cabinet reshuffle being sideswiped, accidentally or not, by Ross's return or Kiwibuild's obvious failures (because a $650,000 house being considered "affordable" in NZ is screwed up and Labours defense of this shows their willingness to capitulate to unregulated market forces when the whole point of government is to balance such things with regulation for the benefit of the people) then your ongoing reporting and focus on one aspect of this one story is not part of the solution its part of the problem!

But this is not the first time Tracy, and her ilk, have gone down this path and its going to be a focus of mine this year to point out how bad the media in NZ has become when covering the beltway in Wellington because if this is what being a political journalist has become then we are better off reading the gossip on the various blogs that covered this in detail and skipping the mainstream media all together.

In the end Watkins has done herself no favors because if this is her best then we could just as well be reading David Hartnell.

D is for Democracy, Disfunction and Disorder

This post is being written as sort of a preface before I spend most of the coming year pointing out what I see is wrong with politics in New Zealand because it seems only fair that as bad as I may paint things to be here, they are far far worse elsewhere.

Currently two of the oldest and most established democracies in the world, the US and the UK (known from here on in as USUK) are in a bit of a state at the moment, and by “state” I mean the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.

In green and fragrant Aotearoa the biggest political bump on the horizon (at least for the chattering classes because child poverty, homelessness, the housing hernia, immigration issues, education and health and labor abuses don’t matter to them) is making sure that our cabinet has the right gender balance because god forbid we don’t have the right ratio of women and men.

In fact, I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were all competent, but when perennial incompetents like Clare Curran, and self-justifying bullies like Meka Whaitiri get in some how its clear that Labour is going to let the illusion take precedent over any particular reality.

So yes, they are gone but we still have Kelvin Davis, Phil Twyford and Ian Lees-Galloway despite their “problems” so the issue is that Labour (including Ardern herself) has a shortage of competent MPs/Ministers and is getting by on a combination of luck and half baked, piss poor, policy ideas which have deviated so much from their original intent (that being a re-set to NZs perilous state) to voter appeasing fiascos (like Kiwibuild) which are doing a lot to had an electoral cudgel to National.

But we are not here to take issue with these clowns, and the circus they now run, that will come later.

Right now, it’s time to point out that no matter how bad could be here, they are mucho worse over there. However, what we are seeing over there could very well happen here if we keep on the way we are going because the situation in USUK is just a more advanced symptom of the same disease we have here so its prudent to sound the warning, so to speak, lest we allow ourselves to succumb to the comfortable illusion that everything is alright here while we laugh at what’s happening over there.

And that’s just in whats left of the worlds functioning democracies, let alone what its like in corrupt and totalitarian s**tholes like Zimbabwe and China.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing killings in the street by security forces, a social media blackout an already fragile state teetering on the brink (again) of chaos as the new dictatorial government (lead by mass murdering monster “president” Emmerson Managawa* who was responsible for the murder of thousands as the head of Zimbabwe’s secret police) fails to bring the economy into any form of order after decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Meanwhile fun-loving China has decided to behave like the communist police state it really is by condemning a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling, after he was previously sentenced to 15 years jail, by re-trying him as a blatant means to bring pressure on Canada for arresting a top Huawei executive for extradition to the US which just shows what China will do if it does not get its way**.

But back to USUK, those at least are still democratic in form but not quite in function as both now have succumbed to infighting among political parties and the issues they face have no clear exit strategy and as such one may either say that this is simply the veneer of representative democracy fading away to expose the controlling elites bickering among themselves as their house of cards falls apart or (slightly less depressingly) our states shifting from true representative democracies to ones which are run by, and for, competing elites with elections as the legitimating mechanism and nothing else.

Either way its depressing but it seems that when faced by a crisis beyond their means to control (that crisis being that once you deal with the devil and start down the path to corruption and total power) you start to veer closer and closer to being a corrupt and failed state like Zimbabwe or a totalitarian nightmare like China and all the talk in the world can’t save you.

US: Go away, baiting!

Currently the US is now nearly a month into its government shutdown and I think Cracked.com has summed it up best with one of its many lists of things which show that people might grumble about “the government” but holly hell the alternative is a lot worse.

You know those far right, ACT party style, “minimal government” wet dreams that tools like David Seymour keeps on getting “excited” about? Well the US is now, in effect, in that state of affairs and it’s not pretty.

Seems all those government services that people take for granted, don’t know about or simply think are “not essential” are in fact very essential for a complex technological society like ours.

So, Seymour's ideological masturbation aside, the US is now locked into a paralytic state of stasis, in effect seeing how long it can hold its breath under water while Republicans and Democrats play chicken with each other over funding for Donald Trump’s wall.

Idiots or the naive might say its all Trumps fault but it takes two to tango and this is not the first-time politicians have played the brinkmanship game with government shutdowns. Yes, Trump has dialed it up to 11 but given that this was the core of his election policy (as limited as that was) he can’t be blamed for wanting to enact that for his voter base.

What he can be blamed for is the fact that building a wall around the US might make good sense ideologically and appeal to his supporters but it’s not going to actually solve any problems unless the problems are how to keep employed an army of wall builders and border guards.

And with the debate now down to the level of a high school feud as Nancy Pelosi and Trump are sniping at and c**k-blocking each other (as Pelosi blocks Trumps state ofthe Union speech so Trump cuts of Pelosi's travel to Afghanistan*3) you’re not looking at anything which we could call “representative” or even a functional democracy this is two spoilt rich kids fighting over a toy at day-care.

Its assumed that eventually a compromise will be reached but the damage will have been done and given that congress polls lower than the President its difficult to see the US going on for much longer because as the song says “somethings got to give”*4 and going without pay (or public services) for a month plus is going to do a  lot for arguments of political populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will happily take over if given a chance.

Could they do better? Probably not but at this point I don’t think the public is interested in that and is more interested in the cathartic effect of watching the rich elites having the heads lopped off via the guillotine ala the French Revolution, which interestingly enough was brought about by circumstances similar to those we face today (political deadlock and the parasitic rich sponging off everyone else) than getting their government back up and running.

So, on a democratic scale of one to ten, one being all’s good functioning democracy and 10 being holly s**t-balls democratic failure, the US is now about a 7 or 8 with a nine not far off the longer the shutdown goes on. And even when its ends, because it will eventually, or if Trump gets impeached or removed (because that’s also a possibility) it’s hard to imagine the US going back to normal because what’s happening now is the new normal.

The US is not going to suddenly discover good behavior and responsible politics just because the shutdown ends or Trump is no longer President but instead this is it for them and living with it is the only option. Suddenly films like Idiocracy no longer seem like satirical comedy but rather as a documentary warning from the future.

UK: No democracy please, we're British*5

Meanwhile, if you have not been reading the news (and possibly living in a hole), you would, only marginally, be forgiven for thinking in jolly old England all was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows compared to its transatlantic cousin the US.

But nope, if you thought the UK was doing better then guess again sucker because if the state of the US could be described as a dumpster fire then the Brexit crisis is Dumpster Fire Deluxe.

Consider this, article 50, the clause that triggers the UK from the EU, has already been invoked and is now in progress. All that the UK can do now is negotiate the terms of the exit and its clear that the EU does not want the UK to leave because if they do it not only makes the EU weaker but could give other members ideas as well and no supranational state wants parts of its empire falling off as it weakens the whole enterprise, let alone major members of it (as the UK is).

Sure, the UK could go back to the drawing board but as CNN points out none of the four options that could develop under article 50 are really going to solve things so in the end the choices are: Brexit, crashing out of the EU (also known a s hard Brexit), having a second referendum or changing the government. Choose wisely young Padawan.

If the UK takes the Brexit path, it’s out of the EU come mind 2019, what happens after is anyone’s guess but there are disaster stories both ways if the UK does or it does not and having a second referendum may reverse the vote but that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent because if you can reverse one vote you can reverse any vote and what’s to say that it could go around again and again once that Pandora's box is opened.

But if there is a second vote and the Britain decide to stay in the EU then those who voted leave are unlikely to go quietly and this sets up something close to a civil war scenario with an intractable position and no clear middle ground.

What is clear is that the UK can’t be both in and out and like the US, political revolutionaries are getting ready to pounce, as Jeremy Corbyn has already forced the issue by calling for a general election to break the deadlock.

Of course Corbyn, once PM, may also want to bring other parts of his manifesto to the table which is fine by me but with an emphasis on massive wealth redistribution from the richest to the poorest I cant see many of London’s wealthy bankers being down with that but Brexit, like the government shutdown in the US, is just a symptom  and not the real cause of the disease that’s eating the UK from the inside out and so reversing the vote will be nothing but a cosmetic fix and simply split things even further.

And Theresa May is damned if she does and damned if she does not, she has survived a no confidence vote but that matters little in the grander scheme when her plan for an exit is not palatable to anyone. All Brexit has really done is expose the divide in the UK, just like Trump has in the US, and in doing so presented having a hand cut off or an eye poked out as the only choice to voters.

So, at this point, the UK reminds me of England on the eve of the 1640s civil war which split the nation between Royalists and Parliamentarians, Catholics and Protestants and Cavaliers

 and Round-heads in which the decent, unlike the American Civil war in the 1860s, was not a supremely violent struggle to the death between two economic and political systems set inside a supposedly democratic state but rather a political schism between sides over a range of issues, magnified by religious difference and where the sides were emergent democracy vrs the older monarchical order.

Thus, at some point, something has to happen and when it does one side or another will not be happy and so another phase of the disease will kick in and further unrest ensues, making the situation in essence loose/loose.

Meanwhile in Godzone: Don’t say it can’t happen here!

If the political antics and chaos of USUK is not enough to make you wonder the we have our cousins across the ditch and their own political turmoil to consider.

Still NZ compared to USUK is a lot more viable at this time and if a cabinet reshuffle is all that gets into the media then we may be just a bit better off, for now that is as we shall soon see that being slightly further up the democratic anthill may protect us from the rising floodwaters of crappy politics and politician’s for a while but we also have to deal with the survivors from lower down scrabbling their way up trying to take over what’s left (I’m looking at you Peter Theil and China).

Democracy has its moments to be sure and it is having a bad day worldwide at this time but if USUK is anything to go by the alternatives to good government and real representative democracy (or even direct democracy) are rule by corrupt elites, genocidal maniacs and places that we don’t even want to visit let alone live in.

So consider this post a means of making sure that what’s follows on this blog is always with the perspective of what’s going on elsewhere lest I be accused of complaining about nothing because its not the state of NZ per se that’s the issue with me but the direction our own democracy is going in that has me blogging and it’s a lot better to sound the alarm before the whole mess goes off the cliff than pick up the pieces and rebuild (if such a thing is even possible) at the bottom or like USUK try and do so while free falling downwards.

Vootie!

*-Who has family happily living in NZ because reasons.

**-And people wonder why the National Party acting as a quisling for China is such a threat to democracy here.

*3-Why she needs to go to Afghanistan anyway is anyone’s business but I suppose she needs a holiday

*4- Yes Fitzgerald’s sentiment is upbeat and positive but the sentiment remains the same but if you need something more suitably dark then the Beastie Boys have you covered.

*5-with apologies to Messrs Foot and Marriot