Herald Business Bouquets and Brickbats
Some extracts from the full list:
THE FELTEX AWARD FOR PULLING THE RUG
Michael Cullen for scuppering the airport deal with a last-minute tax rule change. When that didn’t deter willing sellers, he ensured the “strategic” land couldn’t be sold anyway.THE WILLIE APIATA AWARD FOR COOLNESS UNDER FIRE
Solid Energy chairman Don Elder for wrestling a bag of coal from a Santa-suited protester while dodging a custard pie at the company’s public meeting in Auckland.THE RED ARMY AWARD FOR SCORCHING THE EARTH
The Previous Government – nine years of budget deficits, ACC blowouts, health board infrastructure deficits … good luck, John.
I especially like the red army award. It’s not even nine years of budget deficits. It is a permament structural budget deficit.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
some of your readers would probably find this interesting too..
http://whoar.co.nz/2009/the-biggest-business-scandals-of-2008/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 1st, 2009 at 11:02 am
some of them may also be somewhat ‘engaged’ by this piece..
http://whoar.co.nz/2009/why-i-am-a-socialist/
(just doing what i can for yr comment traffic..eh..?
..yr welcome..!..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 1st, 2009 at 12:00 pm
“THE RED ARMY AWARD FOR SCORCHING THE EARTH”
Cullen should be in the same dock as Hotchin, Young and Moses.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
It will be a long time before the Auckland Airport government interference is forgotten by shareholders, and not just those with AIA shares either. AIA shares last traded at $1.60 – rather less than the $3.65 offered in the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board partial offer. That is a huge loss to shareholders many of whom are just Kiwis trying to do the best for their families and futures. Most saw Cullen’s decision as simply political, a votecatcher in South Auckland.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
They forgot to include ‘The Emperor has no Clothes Award’ …. the winner (by a long line) The Rt (Dis)Hon Winston Peters.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Then of course he paid three times the value for NZ Rail for what he admitted were ideological reasons. Settled?? several Maori claims for hundreds of millions committed to spend $750mill on Foreign Affairs to keep Winston happy…Treachery on a major scale.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Philu and others may find this piece rather informative…..
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2008/12/marixm-was-all-wrong-but-when-they-were.html
It basically points out how the Left have misidentifed their true “big business exploiters of the poor”,ie:the State backed ones,as opposed to the “free market” business types…..those who create wealth without the States gun propping them up…..
Quote:…………”But the Marxists did get a few things right. Marxists often discuss a situation where a powerful elite exploit the masses for the benefit of the elite. Marx saw a combination of feudal lords using state power to exploit the masses. And that was correct.
Anyone investigating the world of that time would see that there existed an aristocracy which took the wealth produced by the peasant classes for their own benefit. In these cases the productive effort of the masses was truly expropriated via the coercive apparatus of the state.
Marxism went wrong when it assumed that the same held true for any wealthy “aristocracy” including those who became wealthy by voluntary exchange. Marx missed the key difference between the two systems. The feudal lords amassed wealth through involuntary confiscation of the work of others. The entrepreneur, however, combined the various factors of production: labour, capital, resources into a product that had greater value than the individual value of the factors of production.
His value was not derived from exploiting labor by refusing to pay them the full value of their labor. In fact, his profit was derived by creating new value using existing resources and labor. He added to the economic pie, he didn’t take pieces from it. More importantly, as the Marxists entirely missed, this system of production drove up the value of labor. Labor became more and more valuable. Eventually it reached the point where the workers were considered “middle class” and living in relative comfort compared to previous generations.
But, while Marxists have been wrong about the labor theory of value and the economic process of free exchange, their basic description of the exploitation process is not that far off the facts. There always have been a class of exploiters who use state power to confiscate the wealth that others produce.
And, contrary to what the Right says, but consistent with what Marx has said, that class is a wealthy, powerful, politically-connected elite. And they continue to work pretty much the same way the feudal aristocracy worked. They use state power to strip the working many of their wealth in order to benefit themselves.
But this is not inherent in the market system. A depoliticized market is not one where this sort of wholesale plunder can take place. The method by which this exploitation is engineered is through the use of political power. The state intentionally distorts the market through various interventions. These interventions then channel wealth from the masses to the favored few.
We have seen numerous examples of this. For instance, the political elite, including Obama, have actively worked to legislate wealth away from the poor to the wealthy corporate elite who produce ethanol. Worse yet, this results in driving up food prices world-wide and condemning the world’s poor to hunger. I can’t think of another area where state intervention has been so detrimental to so many, outside the armaments industry…..”
I submit it for your consideration….
January 1st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
James what you say has merit but you fail to get to the nub of the matter, the left are butt fuckers.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
SSB, I have had an ‘Awakening’
The Left are actually pure evil.
Full of lies and deceit.
Intellectual Socialists prepared to risk none of their own personal wealth, and happy to persue ideological bollocks for self aggrandisement.
They plot and plan to de-stabilise, and use the hope and aspirations of the underclass to achieve their aims and objectives.
Yet deep down they despise the self same people who support them.
They are morally bankrupt, have no moral compassat all. Yet they profess to have.
Sexual Deviants with no regard for social issues.
In a nutshell, dreadfully snide, contemptuous collectives of cynical non – achievers!
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:49 am
Who would want to employ H2 after her cover-up in the police inquiry after the Stephen Joyce complaint to the Chief Electoral Officer Henry Davies at the 2005 election? No-one came out of the last election smelling of roses.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
James what you say has merit but you fail to get to the nub of the matter, the left are butt fuckers.”
Yes but I thought that was so obvious to everyone it was pointless saying it again…..ta!