Posts by WH
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some of us don't actually think the Fourth Labour Government was the parliamentary equivalent of a slasher flick.
rant follows.
New Zealand paid a high price for the the neo-liberal economic ideology that links the economic policies of Douglas, Richardson and Birch. A lot has been written about how our government was essentially hijacked by Treasury briefings - Douglas' book sets how it was done.
That isn't to say that everything the Fourth Labour Government did was wrong, but neo-liberalism did a lot of damage to our country. We had to wait 15 years before a more moderate movement could restore some balance. In the meantime, wage and salary earners languished under the ERA, we had our health and education systems deliberately starved of funds, there was not enough capital or infrastructure spending, and we had a government that was committed to under-regulation, tax cuts and asset sales. Our backwater of an economy missed out on the global boom that was the 1990's. Vapid economic slogans were used to paper over policy failures and maintain a sense of orthodoxy.
Maybe our technocrats just lacked the maturity to introduce more careful reform after the excesses of Muldoon, but there were real consequences of the movement that Douglas helped to lead. Clinton, Blair and Clark had to fight tooth and nail to first establish their own economic credentials, and then conclusively prove that neo-liberalism is a defective economic theory.
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They accepted biased and poor quality research to hype up the harms of BZP and suppressed information they didn't like.
What is the state of the research regarding the side effects of medium to long term BZP use?
A few months back I saw a newspaper report of a "study" had concluded that short term effects of BZP included sleeplessness, euphoria, mild anxiety, perspiration and increased pulse.
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A possible Democratic President won't be around till Jan 2009. We have an election before then. Might not be Labour having to do decide on whether to u-turn.
Perhaps it was just me, but I thought I sensed a collective popular yawn about the Air New Zealand issue? The press coverage seemed only to annoy the Australian government. Perhaps Labour's sense of ANZAC spirit is reserved for dead Australian soldiers.
A party that is 20 points behind in the polls might want to gets it fingers back on the pulse. Maybe I'm just grumpy cos its winter.
</snark>
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I must admit I thought our government's reaction lacked a little class. And a certain sense of good timing. If I was an Australian foreign minister facing an election cycle I know I'd be less than pleased.
"If they tried this up north, we'd be out with guns."
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That Chris Trotter can write a bit.
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Yeah, my Sydney friend sold her Arch Hill 2 bedroom cottage for 300k more than she paid for it 5 years earlier at Easter. Kinda puts Kiwisaver into perspective!!
Nice. Its prolly better to look at the housing market and share markets in the long run terms.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/12/100_year_bull_b.html
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Russell... thanks for the Salon sub-prime primer... its cleared things up substantially for me...
Ditto that. Also liked the If Meetings Were Blog Comments clip. First.
Oh yeah, and now the housing market is supposedly in decline, meaning I'm going to get less for my current house. Bummer. That's another 75k down
Sorry to hear that... The housing market debate raises interesting income and wealth distribution issues. Not that I begrudge him this, but even with the latest correction, my landlord has made almost three times what I have been able to save over the last five years, tax free.
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When he isn't being melodramatic, Trotter is one of our most perceptive political writers.
Perhaps this is because demanding proper journalistic standards might actually put him out of a job?
I tend to agree that Chris Trotter is one of our best political writers, putting aside whatever that suggests about the quality of his competition. Its hard to find good writing in New Zealand, and we would definitely be worse off without him. (I'm not sure that the John Armstrong style of political writing even counts as journalism. Compare John's latest effort with Fran's.)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4164368a1861.html#Scene_1
Confronting The New Zealand Herald is one of the truly depressing things returning New Zealanders must encounter when they board in Los Angeles or Singapore. Alongside the Financial Times or The Australian, its mix of parochial tub-thumping and eclectic superficiality underlines its last-bus- stop-on-the-planet origins.
So yeah, basically I think Chris is pretty good.
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I haven't had an opportunity to review the bill, but I have heard some of the complaints doing the rounds. If HC is to be believed, I might wait to see what emerges from the select committee's review.
I suppose I'm (relatively) more familiar with the campaign finance reform debate in the US context, with its split between Democrats and Republicans, and arguments from free political speech meeting the need to control the impact of monied interests on the political process. As I understand it, regulating third party political communications has proved to be one of the more difficult problems there.
I haven't read much comment on the bill yet (maybe I'm just not looking in the right places) so thanks for writing this.
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I am going to come off my high horse a little.
As a few people have rightly pointed out, this is Russell's place and I don't want to second guess the way he moderates it. Speaking generally, I think we should be courteous to people we disagree with and avoid making personal criticisms. I recognise that all discussions have boundaries, and that those boundaries are not for me to draw.