Posts by izogi
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Polity: Buying a fight with democracy, in reply to
I’m perfectly comfortable with a small amount of voter fraud being the consequence of not disenfranchising people.
Same here. Carrying on, if you assume that it merely takes scrutiny time to identify fraud and so it's not until some time after the election that fraud is identified, it should still be possible to compare with the result and determine a probability that it could have affected the outcome, should it not?
I guess in these days when a small number of Party votes might tip a threshold, or result in MPs having been allocated differently between parties, maybe fraud could be identified as having made a significant difference, in which case the election could be re-run if things are so desperate to ensure a trusted result, and maybe there's merit in ensuring that's possible under legislation. But until that's actually a demonstrated problem, it seems very over the top to protect for it when there's a down-side.
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This, National says, is to prevent the problem of political parties not having sufficient time to do “proper scrutiny” of the roll.
To what degree do political parties scrutinise the roll at present, and what examples are there of anything coming of it?
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to
If you download sensitive information from the account and republish this or use it for commercial gain, that’s surely illegal. Slater earns a living from his site. Republishing data he could reasonably assume to be private and confidential could be seen as making commercial gain.
From what I’ve seen of Cameron Slater, I’d find it credible that he did it for political gain, or for fun, or for some sociopathic hatred. Regardless of his reasons and whether he happens to make money on the side or not, the names of thousands of Labour supporters and donors get seen much more publicly than either Labour or those people ever intended, and Labour’s incompetence in keeping that information in an unambiguously secure place shouldn’t be forgotten. Also, if generating income as a consequence is significant, does this also have an effect on the day-to-day actions of more traditional journalism outlets, such as newspapers, whenever they publish things someone didn’t intend to be published?
I do think Rob Stowell made an important point above that the direct involvement of Jason Ede in the PM’s office should really be treated as the greater issue here, whether it’s classed as criminal or simply revolting ethics for senior members of Cabinet and their staff to be participating in everything that was done.
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"The sad thing is, 98 per cent is concluded," he said.
This is a side to this which keeps me concerned. As long as it's apparently only Dairy and Pharmaceuticals which remain, it sounds as if we've already committed to signing away whatever sovereignty and rights we're not allowed to know we're signing away, unless we'll end up signing away even more of them.
Is the main motivation for signing the TPPA really that if we don't, it'll be hard to get a new trade deal with any of the countries which have?
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
How many tens of millions did this government spend to secure the presidency of the Security Council? McCully has stated that he wants to solve the middle-east crisis during his whole one month tenure. Maybe in his spare time he’ll find a cure for the common cold and come up with a solution to climate change.
Yesterday Tracy Watkins wrote a very congratulatory piece about McCully, during which she more or less expressed how much of an instinctively awesome negotiator he is, using the recent MH-17 stuff as an example whilst managing to quietly dance around the point that he’d really been completely ineffective in his role there. Not his own fault, of course, as probably nobody else could have done any better (which may be the truth), but naturally the main thing is that he’s still optimistic things will somehow work out… because they always do, or something like that.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
You're probably right, and yet this is still a government which seems to be good at severely mis-reading public opinion, then caving last minute based on polls of public opinion, adopting 65% of opposition policy and dressing it up as if it's always been government policy. Therefore I still have some hope.
But not much hope.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
Yes it’s good and I don’t personally think there’s necessarily been a lack of MSM journos being concerned about the TPPA. But at the same time it’s getting hidden and obscured behind the magazine-style priorities, as if those who manage and design the pages don’t trust their own journalists to come up with good material. There’s some major stuff happening that’ll impact everyone for a long time, but it’s being tucked away as if it won’t interest anyone.
On Andrew Hoggard involvement, it’s good to hear that he’s also concerned, but it’s also still frustrating that representatives from a supposedly benefiting industry get to observe whilst those of us who are likely having our rights and benefits traded away in exchange are being locked out. Andrew Hoggard might give some insight on the benefits (or lack of them) for Dairy, but somehow I doubt he’ll keep us informed of everything being traded away elsewhere, either because he’s not being told or because it’s not in his industry’s commercial interests to inform everyone of that.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
Sounds about right, the local weekly arrived yesterday, front page headline: Treated effluent gets the taste test
This morning I listened to some great coverage of the ongoing TPPA stuff from Morning Report. Then I loaded up Stuff to see a top page magazine opinion about some guy and his pig in a Vodafone ad. Not far off yesterday afternoon’s engrossing front page newswire article about some random 911 operator in New Mexico who told a US caller to solve a problem themselves.
TPPA coverage? Sure, but you have to scroll down and pretend you’re interested in the Business section.
No wonder the government doesn’t seem concerned about political ripples..
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
Given the arbitrariness of Stuff.co.nz moderation, there’s very little that can be extrapolated from such a limited number of voices
I'm also skeptical given how many times I've seem completely polarised discussions on Stuff, only to be followed by a discussion polarised the opposite way just a day later.
I think the government must be hoping that this outrage being expressed is restricted to the internet and upper-class-political minority, and that there are swathes of voters out there who simply don't care because they have more immediate problems, and so on. That's a story of the entire election last year.
If and when consequences of the TPPA become more immediate problems for individuals (can't parallel import, can't get medication, etc), then maybe voters will start caring, if blame is appropriately placed, even though it'll be too late to make a difference. The likes of Tim Groser and John Key probably anticipate they'll be retired from public life and long gone by the time that happens.
What happens if Cabinet signs the deal but parliament fails to follow through? Does it potentially subject New Zealand to humongous penalties?
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to
There is of course an alternative. Raise taxes so that New Zealanders as a country can pay US Pharma companies.
Or just make Fonterra pay directly from all the extra profit it’ll supposedly be getting at the expense of most of the rest of us.
Heh.