Posts by Tinakori
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to mark taslov,
"Whether they follow through or not, the impact on the day to day life of Hong Kongers will be marginal, at least in comparison to the curtailing of freedoms being carried out in western democracies."
Eh?
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Russell Brown,
Good for Rawshark. Based on what happened with The Hollow Men material and the material taken or leaked from Shandwick - the pr firm dealing with GM clients - in Nicky Hager's other books, he or she is looking reasonably safe.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Dean Wallis,
It could apply to either if that was their excuse but I was responding to Bart Hansen who said that the person who nicked Whaleoil's email archive was doing it for the public good. I said that's fine as long as you accept the possible consequences.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Bart Janssen,
"The attack on his computers was illegal. But I strongly suspect that the person made the attack with the intention of exposing exactly what was exposed, that is the crime was commited for the public good."
That's fine as long as the perpetrator is prepared to accept the consequences should they be caught. If they are not it quickly becomes the excuse of the tyrant through the ages - those laws don't apply to me because of my motives and the threat posed by those whose rights I am violating. That isn't healthy for any part of the political spectrum.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Not trolling, just teasing. So Annette was to blame.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Was it Helen or Heather, Deep Red, who gave the orders?
-
Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
"It’s like having a discussion with a National Party election pamphlet."
Perhaps this explains the election result, Kyle!
The tax changes in 2009 involved a shift from one type of tax to another so they did not increase the tax burden overall, hence not decreasing demand.
And your comments about so called austerity illustrate my point exactly. National borrowed huge amounts of money to prop up public spending and cushion the effects of the GFC. You are implying they should have spent been more as Labour and the Greens were demanding. This would have resulted in even higher levels of Government debt.
-
Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And your point is Deep Red? The increasing debt is the result of National pursuing orthodox Keynesian deficit spending in a downturn. That there is more debt was not my point. I am hardly going to deny what is obvious. My point is that National were attacked vigorously by Labour and hysterically by the Greens for not spending enough, especially in the first term. They used the UK term "austerity" to describe the National approach at a time Nationalwere running extremely largely operating deficits to support public spending, maintain demand in the economy and avoid a deeper downturn. Those deficits required very large borrowing, hence the increase in our debt. My point was that, Labour wanted to spend more than National and the Greens even more than Labour. To do so they would have had to borrow far more, even if they had raised taxes (counterproductive in a downturn anyway). The deficit and net debt profiles are in Fig 3 of the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update 2014. In your table you will also notice the debt to GDP ratio fell in 2014. Once again this is consistent with increasing tax revenue from a growing economy requiring less borrowing. That's why, Russell, Labour did not have to make extreme spending promises - and David Parker doesn't strike me as an extreme kind of guy - during the election campaign. Now is the part of the economic cycle when revenue rises and you can both keep increasing government spending - as National has done throughout the GFC - and start paying down the debt accumulated to ameliorate the impact of the downturn. That's what National began to do in 1994 after the public finances returned to surplus and Laour continued through most of the 2000s until our very own downturn before the GFC happened.
-
Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
"Labour hasn’t found a good way to tag them with this and make it stick – it’s largely taken the economy and the government books off the table as an effective campaign strategy for them."
That's probably because Labour wanted a lot more government spending that even with higher tax rates would have required more borrowing , a higher deficit and more public debt. It was not a profitable angle from which Labour could attack National.
Incidentally, the dog that isn't barking in the discussion of sexuality is the not particularly distinguished performance of Labour MPs towards Chris Finlayson in Parliament. Didn't see too much dissent from Trevor Mallard and co calling him tinker bell. I think Kevin Hague agreed it was seriously dumb but can't remember anyone in the Labour caucus doing so.
-
OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to Steve Barnes,
"You are kidding right? You are referring to the Brash defeat presumably, even Craig admits that National deserved to lose that one."
Nope - 2002 National disaster 20 something per cent of the popular vote and a shower of media shit for the party and its leaders before and after the election. Perhaps you were overseas or too young or had yet to immigrate