In Part 1 I covered the first three of the seven legal actions or indictments filed against former US President Donald Trump.

UPDATES FROM PART 1:

The 14^th Amendment case brought by the State of Colorado was predictably dismissed on the 4^th of March by the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and in the lopsided manner (9-0) that experts had predicted so Trump will be on the ballot in all 50 states in November.

The New York Attorney General fraud case took a turn decidedly in Donald Trump’s favour. The massive and unrealistic fine levied by Judge Engoron was designed to be so steep as to make it virtually impossible for Trump to raise a bond necessary to file an appeal. He had to lodge a bond to cover the entire $368 million fine plus a year’s interest making a total of $450 million. Despite Trump’s considerable assets, it proved impossible for him to find even a consortium of bond agents to raise the necessary bond for his appeal and so the NY AG James filed an application in Westchester County Court to seize Trump’s golf resort at Bedminster as a precursor to a forced sale to cover the fine. Trump appealed the size of the surety to the Manhattan Court of Appeal under his 8^th Amendment right against excessive fines and the Court ruled that the bond amount necessary to be filed before an appeal could be lodged was reduced to $175 million and a one-week extension was granted to enable Trump to find either the cash or raise a bond. As reported in Part 1, Trump’s media company that owns Truth Social (his social media platform) had been cleared to merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp and with that merger came a listing of the combined entity (Trump Media and Technology Group Corp) on the NASDAQ and a few days before the bond filing deadline, TMTCC was floated with the ticker symbol $DJT and the listing price (despite a 40% retreat since the float) initially almost doubled Trump’s net worth by $3.3 billion to over $6 billion. Trump was able to deposit cash to cover the bond that was easily issued, and he formally posted the appeal bond on Monday March 25^th. The Manhattan Appeal Court granted Trump an even more significant favour in that he has until the September court season to “perfect” his appeal which is a legal term to allow the appellant time to get together all the necessary paperwork. The autumn court season begins on 3 September and even if granted an expedited hearing at the New York State Court of Appeal and they uphold the Ergoron finding, Trump’s Federal Appeal Court appeal avenues would take this case well past the election. The Manhattan Appellate Judge finally stayed Engoron from any further action on the case until appeal.

The final four are all criminal indictments in that a specific criminal statute is alleged to have been breached. In the US these fall into two broad categories: misdemeanors or minor offences and felonies or more serious offences. I will again go over each case discussing the backgrounds of the prosecutors and judges and examine the likelihood of any convictions and that if so found, the likelihood any guilty verdict would withstand appeal. Each of these four cases cover so many issues and the status of each case have been changing dramatically (each in Trump’s favour) each week so I will cover each indictment in a single episode.

3 – Criminal Cases

(i) District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Manhattan Municipal Court – Campaign finance violations

Alvin Bragg is one of a wave of radical Democrat District Attorneys catapulted to power behind boatloads of George Soros’ cash. Soros is the Hungarian billionaire who made his fortune shorting against the UK Pound during the Asian financial crisis and he has spent billions over the decades funding a large variety of left-wing causes, Foundations and left leaning candidates for political office globally but especially in the US. A common feature of Soros backed District Attorneys are radical left law enforcement policies such as:

• Decriminalising shoplifting and petty theft of amounts usually below $1,000 – jurisdictions that have such DAs and left leaning city councils that allow this have seen shoplifting rates and ram raids soar.
• No cash bail – this has been a huge reason for the rise in crime in violent crime in cities where Soros backed DAs handle the flow of prosecutions. New York City, even before the influx of illegal immigrants, was notorious for releasing violent felons back onto the street where they go on to commit more crime. NYC courts have become revolving doors for criminals.
• Early release of criminals with extremely generous parole administration which has led to serious offenders serving lengthy custodial sentences being released back on the streets.
• Severe constraints on the activities of the police. NY Mayor Rudi Giuliani famously drastically reduced the crime and murder rate in NYC in the 1980’s from the so-called broken windows policing where even petty crimes like subway turnstile jumping and public urination were prosecuted which led to the NYPD ending up catching major criminals. Now there can be no targeted policing of any type and police cannot search and frisk known criminals for fear of being tagged as racist. This means that violent criminals operate almost with impunity.

When it comes to finding a jurisdiction to attempt to stretch any law to the absolute maximum, a DA like Alvin Bragg with a Manhattan judge being as anti-Trump as Judge Engoron in the civil fraud case and a heavily Democrat voting jury pool in deeply liberal Manhattan, it was a perfect location to bring charges against Trump that even the Biden Administration appointees at the Federal Elections Commission and the deeply politicised Federal Department of Justice wouldn’t bring.

Most readers will recall Trump’s tangle with porn actress ‘Stormy Daniels’ or her real name Stephanie Clifford. She accused Trump of being her client and paying her for sex, an accusation Trump denied but during the 2016 Presidential Election campaign, Trump instructed his then lawyer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 in hush money for her to stay silent about the accusation during his campaign. Trump’s opponents alleged that the payment was an ‘in kind’ contribution to his election campaign even though the cheque to Clifford was paid by his lawyer Cohen and alleged he falsified business records to cover an unspecified underlying Federal Crime. Even assuming Trump DID violate New York campaign finance law, the failure to make a routine Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing is the campaign version of leaving your car parked by a fire hydrant and not paying the parking ticket. Routine minor campaign filing errors, if investigated by the FEC, are normally dealt with by either a retrospective filing and paying a fine and if prosecuted, being nothing more than a minor misdemeanor offence. For that reason and for the case being past the 7-year statute of limitations and the weak tea nature of the charges, all are part of the reasons why even Trump hating senior Biden appointees at the FEC and DOJ never brought charges. Bragg circumvented these normal objections by convening a Grand Jury deep in the heart of perhaps the most Trump hating city in America and, as the old aphorism goes, “you could get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich”. In other words, obtaining an indictment in this jurisdiction is easy no matter how flimsy and trumped up the charges may be. The alleging of a Federal crime and yet never actually charging Trump (or even revealing in court what this felony might be) was the thin gruel Bragg used to turn a NY State and FEC filing misdemeanor into Federal felony business fraud, an attempt that no neutral judge would allow a prosecutor to get away with in any normal courtroom but Bragg’s courtroom under Judge Juan Merchan, another partisan Democrat appointee, in Manhattan was anything but normal.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Bragg’s case was the fact that the only prosecution witnesses were Clifford herself who has flip flopped and changed her story multiple times and swore under oath in court that she never slept with Trump and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, who has been caught lying under oath in several court rooms AND to Congress. Challenging the truthfulness of both their testimonies became an easy defense for Trump’s lawyers to make.

The reaction has been a wall of skepticism even from legal analysts known to be unfavourably disposed to Trump. A sample:

• Two of the DA office’s prosecutors resigned after the indictment
• “It is said that if you go after the king, you should not miss,” wrote Richard Hasen, a campaign finance law expert at UCLA. “In this vein, it is very easy to see this case tossed for legal insufficiency or tied up in the courts well past the 2024 election before it might ever go to trial. It will be a circus that will embolden Trump, especially if he walks.”
• Even Ian Millhiser, the liberal legal commentator for Vox, called the legal theory on which Bragg’s case is built “dubious.”
• Constitutional legal analyst Jonathon Turley in his New York Post article on the subject noted Bragg’s frequent propensity to plea down violent and serious felony charges and yet being happy to turn an expected at most misdemeanor into a tortuous charge of business document fraud.

The verdict and what happens next

The trial went pretty much as most commentators expected. Clifford’s testimony was salacious but ultimately weak and contradictory, Cohen admitted to his prior lying under oath and further admitted to stealing $64,000 from Trump and yet still Trump was convicted by a jury pool said to be 94% Democrat on all 34 counts.

Grounds for appeal were described by esteemed Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley as so vast that he called it a “target rich environment”:

• The selection of Merchan was unorthodox. Judges in trials like this are normally selected randomly from the pool of Manhattan Municipal Court judges. Merchan was hand selected from the New York Supreme Court where he had a long track record of politically biased decisions.
• Merchan’s conflicts of interest in his donations to anti GOP and specifically Stop Trump causes along with donations to Biden and in particular, his daughter high profile use of the trail to fundraise for Democrats, would normally lead to a recusal.
• Merchan disallowed Trump’s lawyers from bringing to the stand, as significant witness for the defense, Brad Smith, a former Chairman of the FEC, who would later testify to Congress of the spuriousness and lack of legal robustness of the charges laid.
• Merchan’s multiple 1^st Amendment right of free speech busting gag orders that saw Trump fined $10,000’s and threated with jail for contempt for public comments made about the trial, the judge and his daughter whilst Clifford and Cohen made frequent unrestrained references to the trial across multiple media outlets reinforcing the two tiered justice system that sees one set of law interpretations for Republicans and another more lenient set for Democrats.
• Merchan’s requirement that Trump stay in court for the duration of the trial, a break from normal precedent in cases of this nature where normally the defendant is not required to be in court. Democrats thought tying Trump up in New York for 6 weeks would cramp his campaign.
• Merchan arbitrarily changed the burden of jury proof from unanimous to majority as a way to circumvent any pro-Trump holdouts. The unanimous verdict right was recently affirmed by SCOTUS.
• Merchan allowed disgraceful and normally legally inadmissible testimony by Clifford of her alleged sex with Trump, salacious material unrelated to the charges and yet designed to be as damaging as possible to Trump. Any normal judged would’ve stopped Clifford dead in her tracks.
• Merchan’s directions to the jury were biased and distorted and he compounded the error by refusing to give the jurors the normal detailed information packet summarising testimony (in this case over 50 pages) merely allowing them to read it once and not have a copy forcing jurors to return to the judge with multiple clarifying questions.
• The distortion of the misdemeanor charges of campaign violations to federal business fraud felonies alone is so tortuous as to not survive appeal in the eyes of many legal experts in part because right to the end of the trial, the underlying felony Trump was alleged to be trying to hide was never revealed and even MSM network legal commentators (not known for being pro-Trump) were baffled by the pretzel-like efforts Bragg resorted to to conflate the charges.
• In the aftermath of the SCOTUS ruling on Presidential immunity, whole new lines of significant and deal changing appeal open as Trump’s lawyers can attack at various aspects of Trump’s conduct with respect to campaign finances as which of his actions might be within the scope of the immunity. This would require the trial judge to instruct the prosecutors to determine which if any aspects of the indictments (and the complex and questionable layering that Bragg’s team had undertaken to circumvent the statute of limitation and turn minor state misdemeanors into more serious Federal felonies) were not laid in contravention of the Presidential immunity ruling.

Electoral impact of the conviction

Did a flawed, convoluted and concocted prosecution by a jury in such a deep blue city laid by such a controversial, blatant anti Trump and tainted DA presided over by a biased, conflicted and incompetent judge have any effect on Trump’s popularity? For a few days he took a small hit but soon bounced back to stronger than ever leads over Biden in the battleground states and slight leads in national polls. And tying Trump down in NYC so he couldn’t hold rallies? Trump held a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey adjacent to NYC and 100,000 in total showed up, the largest outdoor rally in modern NJ history. And then over 30,000 packed into a park in the South Bronx in the heart of New York’s minority majority ghetto and over 70% of attendees were blacks and Hispanics. Whilst it is highly unlikely that Trump will win NJ and NY, his poll numbers amongst black and Hispanic voters are in some polls double or more what he got in 2016 and 2020 and exceed any polling in these communities of any Republican President since the Nixon and Reagan 49 state routs in 1972 and 1984. Finally, did Trump look affected in any way by the conviction during the debate with Biden? To the contrary he looked calm, measured and in control compared to the faltering and doddery Biden. The Democrats major attack line now is that Trump is a convicted felon. How’s that working out? Trump’s rise and Biden’s decline is such that left leaning and mainstream media are in freak out mode about how to replace their cognitively impaired President and party flag carrier.

Sentencing thoughts

Will Merchan send Trump to jail even for the period of days or weeks before his appeal can be lodged? Highly likely given the Democrats full throated lemming like rush into every aspect of the lawfare against Trump. Maybe Trump’s ability to weather the media storm of negativity over the conviction will finally mean saner heads will prevail. If Trump is incarcerated, that can do nothing but improve his electoral chances as he can claim an almost Nelson Mandela like status and reinforce his relentless attack line that the charges and prosecution are politically motivated (they are) and that, in the Land of the Free, the most popular candidate for President is effectively a political prisoner and that the Biden administration (and its allies in federal and state law enforcement) are conducting themselves like a 3^rd world dictatorship by imprisoning their political opponent on spurious, tissue-thin charges. We can see the big bump Trump got in his polling in the black community after Fulton County DA Fani Willis forced Trump to be arraigned in person at the Fulton County Jail. That infamous mugshot became the catalyst for dozens of prominent black influencers and rappers to endorse Trump. We can read the tea leaves a little from Merchan deferring the sentencing hearing until mid-September from July 11 which enables Trump to be crowned as the formal GOP nominee at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee nearer the end of July. Most commentators say that the deferral arises from the SCOTUS Presidential immunity ruling that, as said earlier, could unravel whole parts of the prosecution’s case. Either way, Trump wins. If he goes to jail, he becomes a martyr and if he doesn’t, he’s free to crisscross the country holding his signature huge rallies. But more significantly, the Bragg prosecution as a tool to remove, defang or pillory Trump into electoral oblivion has failed.

There’s a lot of hysteria over the SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity. This chart sums up what they actually decided quite well.

So basically:

• Constitutional acts: Absolute immunity
• Official but non-constitutional acts: Presumptive immunity
• Unofficial acts: No immunity

Seems fairly reasonable.

I have contempt for many in the US Republican Party who have spent over three years gaslighting voters by claiming Biden didn’t actually win the election. There were 61 court cases and Trump lost 60 of them. The alleged voter fraud was mythical or insignificant. There are few things more important in a democracy than the loser conceding defeat peacefully.

Now we have the Democrats doing their own gaslighting, by claiming Biden is capable of being President until; January 2029. They ask us to disbelieve our own eyes and ears from the debate. The excuses ranging from a cold to too much time rehearsing to the impact of a trip to Europe two weeks before the debate are insulting to people’s intelligence. It is clear that Biden has deteriorated significantly since 2020. The debate performance wasn’t due to one off factors, but due to his ageing and mental cognitive skills. These are only going to worsen.

So the US has both major parties who treat the voters with a degree of contempt, and try to gaslight them that white is black or vice-versa. Americans deserve better.

The Government’s 40 point plan for the third quarter of 2024 is here.

I like these plans. They do several things:

1. Force Ministers to be focused on delivery.
2. Allows the PMs Office to monitor which Ministers are pursuing goals for the Government (as opposed to goals for their ministry)
3. Gives transparency to what the Government sees as priority areas

They’re not rocket science, but something that we saw with the previous Government what the absence of them meant.

Back in the day I worked for a bank for a year to pay for my university study. The staff were valued, all customers were valued, service was very good and the branch often supported the community. Oh how things have changed.

I recently separated two business areas by forming a new company (an easy thing to do in NZ!) called BoI Adventures and Art to cover www.russellinfo.co.nz & www.wood2water.co.nz.

I then contacted Westpac as my business and personal bank (as in a wopping great mortgage). The reason was simply to open a new business account around two retail outlets and that had been a part of a company that I have always used Westpac for – i.e. simply separating one account into two with no changes to operations. A five minute job one would think.

You can’t do it online with Westpac, or over the phone, so I dropped into my local branch and got told I needed an appointment and one was available about a week later. I duly turned up and spent an hour giving details they already had. At the end of the meeting the manager then told me he would now refer it to something called the business team (elsewhere) and they would get back to me within 10 days.

I received an email from a Westpac employee claiming to be an:

Onboarding Specialist  – CDD Centre of Excellence 

• he did not know what an information centre or retail art/homewares shop did.
• he asked for – a business plan for two shops that had banked with them under my ownership for four years that addressed “business goals, start-up capital and cashflow forecast.”
• and – “Will there be any one-off lump sums credited from your other business accounts once BOI Adventures and Art Limited Account is opened?”

This is on top of a conversation that was about the possibility of a seasonal overdraft – as is often needed in tourism businesses. In that case the man at the end of the phone opened and started scrolling through my personal account commenting on how much I spend on groceries and how often I go to restaurants for dinner.

I did not proceed with Westpac and had first hand experience to yet another barrier for SMEs. This is an institution that made $477million profit in the first 6 months of 2024 while the country is in a recession.

However – none of them appear much better. When I was involved with South Auckland Middle School I calculated that providing uniform, stationery and IT was saving decile 1 families approx. $1,300 per student per year. I devised a plan where families could put that into a new bank account for their child at $25 per week. At the end of their 4 years they would then have $5,200 plus interest to either keep saved (and maybe add to) or spend on needed items through the Y11 – 13 years. I also looked in detail at a Trust set-up that would allow these accounts to be conglomerated and to invest through a Milford type entity as the sums are significant. The families and students would participate in the decision-making and it would not only be a savings platform but a teaching platform for financial literacy. A brilliant leg-up for the students.

I thought the first step would be easy … getting a bank to come out and open 180 accounts for the wonderful SAMS students.

Not a single bank was interested in the least – a range of reasons were given – including that they did not have staff resources to do that. Their socials consciences have recently been seen forlornly wandering in the dark corners of the city at night. I know full well that if Kings College or St Cuthbert’s had made the same request they would have been there before the phone call ended.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

Chris Bishop has announced changes to housing laws which will make a huge difference to housing affordability. Almost every expert has said that to reduce pressure on house prices you need to both build up and build out. The NIMBYs oppose building up and the Greenies opposes building out. Phil Rayford in 2017 had some great policies, but backed away from many of them in Government. Chris Bishop in six months is setting a cracking reform pace. Key details are:

• New Housing Growth Targets introduced for Tier 1 and 2 councils, requiring them to enable 30 years of feasible housing capacity in their district plans, using ‘high’ population growth projections.
• New requirement that ‘price indicators’ (such as the difference in the price between land zoned for rural and urban use) do not deteriorate over time.
• Councils prohibited from imposing rural-urban boundary lines in planning documents (but can still have rurally zoned land).
• Tier 1 councils must deliver housing intensification along ‘strategic transport corridors’ (e.g. key bus routes).
• Tier 1 councils must directly offset any housing capacity lost due to reasons such as ‘special character’ elsewhere.
• Councils cannot set minimum floor area requirements for apartments and other houses, or require balconies.

Currently Councils just have to zone for immediate use three years of growth, and can choose low growth scenarios. By requiring them to zone for 30 years of high growth will mean a significant amount of new land made available.

The removing of the ability to set minimum sizes and balcony requirements will also make a real difference – some have said reduce apartment costs by $70,000 or so just for the balcony. Of course many developers will choose to still have balconies, but they can follow where the market demand is.

The 60 paragraph decision by Judge Jelas is an interesting read. Some extracts:

• The associate returned to Scotties the two dresses and bag that had been taken. The top however was not returned (so a deliberate decision not to return everything)
• Ms Ghahraman in her affidavit in support stated she is unable to fully comprehend or explain why she stole the items. She states she did not want to keep or wear the items stating some would never fit her and she would never wear or use them. (So she stole things she didn’t want, that just happened to be massively expensive!)
• Ms Ghahraman was effectively caught red-handed on the 23rd of December; it was that event that prompted her to return most of the stolen items through her associate. I accept the process of Ms Ghahraman accepting responsibility was most likely triggered by a realisation that she was under suspicion for theft. (yet she didn’t inform the Greens of what had happened)
• Ms Ghahraman describes the most upsetting aspect of the media attention was the large contingent of media who camped outside her private home for weeks (I agree this is very upsetting, as Jason Ede had to endure)
• [The clinical psychologist] is well placed to have provided an unequivocal statement of any causative links that may exist between the thefts and Ms Ghahraman’s mental health. He has not. It is not the role of the Court to make the inferences submitted by Ms Cresswell when [the clinical psychologist] himself has stopped short of doing so. (So it was the lawyer, not the psychologist who said the shoplifting was due to mental health)
• I consider a start point sentence of imprisonment of 20 to 22 months would be warranted. (So a small fine was actually quite generous to Ghahraman)

The UK exit poll (which has been accurate within 1 to 8 seats for the last five elections) is out, and it is slightly better news for the Conservatives than pre-election polling but still on track for their worst outcome in 190 years.

The real interest now is how many Conservative Big Beasts lose their seats, and who survives to stand for the leadership.

The Herald reports:

The Government’s $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) opens to applicants today, though officials are still finalising the assessment process.

The pot will be divided into two parts. There’s $720 million for “resilience infrastructure” – helping to provide for regional resilience in the face of flooding and extraordinary storms, for example, and for the likes of energy security.

The second part is $420m for “enabling infrastructure”: projects that can underpin stronger regional economies and increase lagging productivity.

$60m is set aside for the Government’s “emerging priorities”, a designation that, in the case of the Provincial Growth Fund, proved to be distinctly slushy.

The $720 million for resilience infrastructure looks potentially useful.

I am sceptical of the $420 million for enabling infrastructure as that may just go to projects with inflated business cases as we have seen too often.

Eligible projects must be outside the metropolitan areas of Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, and there are no regions with priority.

That’s an improvement.

Some grants will be made, but equity and debt, which may be on concessionary terms, will be the focus. And the fund’s investments will range, in the main, from $1m to $50m.

My preference is debt followed by equity followed by grants.

An excellent speech by Parliamentary Commissioner Simon Upton for the Environment to Environment Defence Society conference. He focuses on the real substance and challenge of improving the environment, as opposed to just making noise. His key points:

• Inconvenient truth 1: Stopping polluting industries here means shifting pollution elsewhere. We can close polluting industries, but in most cases we will simply import the goods that rely on them from other countries. It is relatively easy to suggest that we shun or close polluting industries. But the reality is that unless we are willing to put an equal focus on working out how to get consumers to stop consuming, demand for the output of those industries will continue to exist.
• Inconvenient truth 2: The dog that barks at every passing car gets dismissed. If we are not prepared to examine trade-offs critically, we will be dismissed as the dog that barks at every passing car. If a government wants to bolster the benefits side of the ledger, I would suggest we need to look at increasing the royalties that the Government charges mining companies on the public’s behalf.
• Inconvenient truth 3: Green growth is not an easy win. Calling for green growth – something I spent seven years working on at the OECD – isn’t the easy economic and environmental win some people imagine. While renewable electricity is usually far more efficient and therefore less damaging than fossil fuels, some ecosystems will be damaged by renewable energy and transmission infrastructure. The green growth vision of the future will continually trade one environmental issue for the next. We can’t escape that.
• Inconvenient truth 4: Change is costly. All politics is distributional and green politics more distributional than most. Talk about just transitions tends to be cheap. Meeting environmental standards cannot be optional. But neither do the means of achieving them need to be monolithic, if only because no two catchments are the same physically or socially.
• Inconvenient truth 5: Degrowth won’t be an easy sell. As a student of human nature my hunch is that if we tell people that they can’t have the stuff they’ve grown to expect, they will turn to thinking about how they can take it from others. That’s potentially a recipe for conflict.

The Hill reports:

Former President Trump has a 2-point lead over President Biden in New Hampshire, according to a poll published Monday, showing significant gains for Trump after Biden’s poor debate performance last week.

The Saint Anselm College poll found that 44 percent of New Hampshire voters would back Trump if the election was held today, to 42 percent supporting Biden. That’s a 12-point swing from an identical December poll, which found Biden with a 10-point lead in the state.

Biden won the state by 7.5% and is now trailing by 2%. This is because people watched the debate and can see Biden is not going to be fit to remain President until January 2029.

Also a CBS poll:

• 72% of voters say Biden not have have the mental and cognitive health to serve as President
• 41% of Democrats say Biden not have have the mental and cognitive health to serve as President
• 80% of Independents say Biden not have have the mental and cognitive health to serve as President
• 72% say Biden should not be running for President
• 46% of Democrats says Biden should not be running for President
• 82% of Independents say Biden should not be running for President

Bring on the convention!

It is amazing that Chloe Swarbrick still leads this chant, despite having been told that many Jews see it as calling for Israel to be destroyed (per the Hamas charter) and hence Jews living there to be wiped out (as Hamas did on October 7).

Now you an argue that those chanting it don’t mean it the way most Jews interpret it, so I guess one can only assume that Swarbrick has decided that the feelings of Jewish New Zealanders don’t matter, compared to the importance of her showing solidarity with those who chant it.

This to me is akin to a politician saying it is okay for them to use the N word in public, because they don’t mean it as a racist term, and the feelings of those who see it is disparaging doesn’t matter.

Nate Silver’s forecast has Trump ay 65% and Biden 35%. This seems about right to me, reflecting that while the popular vote is close, Trump leads in all the battleground states.

The Economist has Trump at 70% and 538 has him at just 49%. The 538 model seems far too cautious. Basically they are hedging their bets by saying it is so far out that anything could happen from Trump winning by 200 electoral votes to Biden winning by 200 electoral votes. They say there is a 22% chance Biden could win in a landslide. I can’t tally that with all the polls of the last year showing him behind in the battlegrounds.

MSN reports:

George Latimer defeated New York Representative Jamaal Bowman in the most expensive congressional primary in US history, a race that exposed the stark divisions within the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war.

Latimer, Westchester County’s top elected official, was leading Bowman by 55.8% to 44.3% with 71% of the votes counted in New York’s 16th Congressional district, according to the Associated Press.

Good.

Bowman’s standing may have been hurt by his sometimes bizarre behavior. He authored blog posts that appeared to give credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Last year he was charged with a misdemeanor after pulling a fire alarm in the US Capitol building as members of Congress were attempting to cast a vote. And his recent rally with Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders was held in the South Bronx, which isn’t in his district.

“It’s very hard for an incumbent to lose. And Congressman Bowman did everything possible” to make that happen, J.C. Polanco, a political analyst and professor of ethnic and race studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, said in an interview before the race was called. “His team committed incredible political malpractice.”

Here’s some of what Bowman has done or said:

• Set off a fire alarm to delay a vote
• Was one of 10 votes against a resolution supporting Israel after the 7 October terrorist attacks
• Claimed allegations of rape of Israeli women by Hamas attackers was a lie
• Promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories
• followed an array of unhinged YouTube accounts that promoted everything from flat-earth content to claims about aliens and time travel to Chinese and Russian disinformation.
• No longer supports a two state solution for Israel and Palestine (wants Jews as a minority in a Palestinian state)
• Called his Democratic challenger an anti-Black racist

Stuff reports:

The man labelled New Zealand’s worst stalker has been jailed for running a “lengthy campaign of terror” by subjecting a further eight women to months of harassment, threats and unwanted sexual attention.

Glenn Green, who has an “extensive number of aliases”, is now known as Glen Anthony Carlion and Antonio Glen Castillano. He changes his name after each stretch in prison.

He has over 200 convictions that include stalking, harassing and breaching protection orders that go back 30 years.

He appeared at the Auckland District Court on Wednesday having earlier admitted charges of criminal harassment, causing harm by posting digital communications and obtaining by deception.

He was the only one in the courtroom wearing a mask.

Judge June Jelas sentenced him to four years and two months in prison.

Every time he gets out of prison, he victimises more women. Unfortunately the maximum sense for criminal harrassment is two years. Might be time to look at increasing it.

Samira Taghavi writes:

I have a question for lawyers of my age or older: in your student days, could you have imagined your law school dean writing that an eminent legal commentator, with years of senior court experience, was an “old racist dinosaur” who should “go die quietly in the corner”?

Unthinkable not that long ago.

My own respect for the value of debate was shaped in a country where there is no respect for debate, that country being the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Iranian regime explicitly seeks the demise of its enemies. We remember the promotion of the (nearly-successful) murder of author Salman Rushdie, for example. The Iranian dictatorship shows, I would suggest, that departure from disciplined debate can drag the undisciplined into violent rhetoric, making our society a more extreme and dangerous place – intellectually and physically. Wishing death upon your opponents not infrequently also silences them, an objective of regimes and hot-headed individuals alike. So it is deeply alarming to me now to hear Establishment voices in this country mimicking the intemperate language of merciless dictatorships.

Iran is an extreme example, but we should share the concern about the trend in NZ to suppress dissent.

One such campaign was against the recent Labour/Green-led group-think that resulted in the Sexual Violence (Legislation) Act, which makes the conviction of innocent defendants more likely.

Despite warnings that the campaign might attract unpleasant personal consequences, I chose to speak out. And the backlash was severe, including vicious emails wishing physical harm upon me.

For instance, following the publication of one of my articles on the then-bill, I received a reprehensible message suggesting that I should not be writing articles, but instead be raped. To me, that message and its maker underlined the severity of declining decorum in proper debates. The campaign, however, also drew support from those who recognised the importance of addressing difficult issues and reinforced my belief that engaging with tough topics is crucial.

Another disturbing thing I noticed in that campaign was that the New Zealand Establishment seems, like the Iranian regime, to have come to the view that, on many issues, there is only one true opinion and that other opinions should be silenced. The silencing is done with belittlement (such as labelling opponents “racist” and “sexist”), “deplatforming” and ultimately “cancellation”.

And we have NZ on Air which effectively will only fund those with the correct view.

In this context, the response from The Māori Law Society merits recognition for its reasoned and respectful tone. Such a response provides a commendable example of how to engage with contrary viewpoints. As highlighted by the reaction to Judd KC’s recent article in LawNews, there is a palpable need for platforms that facilitate thoughtful discourse. It is imperative for those who disagree with Judd KC’s opinions to see this as an opportunity to contribute constructively. I urge anyone who felt “offended” by his arguments to respond with a well-reasoned rebuttal for publication. This approach not only showcases the critical skill of persuasive discourse that is essential for any lawyer, but also reinforces the principle that differing views should be approached with logic and civility, rather than disdain or derogation.

This was once the norm.

I thought readers might be interested in a few more details around what it was like getting to Odesa and being there in wartime.

You can’t fly into Ukraine so you fly to Moldova and then transfer on land. For me this was four flights – to Auckland, Singapore, Istanbul and then Chisinau. I ended up detained in Chisinau for around an hour as immigration authorities there hadn’t someone from New Zealand before and didn’t realise we were on the visa free entry list (despite me telling them). Also they wanted to know the location of the conference I was attending in Odesa, but I couldn’t tell them as I didn’t know. For operational security reasons we were only told 12 hours before it started. Eventually I got released and had a three hour drive across the border.

A typical cobblestone street.

The Potemkin Stairs which are 20 metres wide and 140 metres long.

The Air Alert app which warms you of potential incoming missile strikes.

This is the bomb shelter in the hotel I was staying at – basically just a room in an underground level. There were usually two or three alerts a day. The only time I didn’t got into the shelter was on my final night there. The alert went off at 1 am and I knew I had four flights the next day, so I just rolled over and went back to sleep, banking on the low probability of the strike being near our hotel.

Beautiful music and singing at the welcome function.

The lounge of the hotel the conference was at. Beautiful decor.

A local string quartet at the farewell dinner.

Local architecture.

Beautiful city gardens.

There is around a three hour queue at the border leaving Ukraine. This is because no Ukrainian men aged 18 to 59 are allowed to leave due to conscription. My driver just drove past the queue straight to the border. I asked why we didn’t have to join the queue and he said it was because I had diplomatic status. This cave me a moral quandary because of course I don’t (many at the forum did) and I pondered informing him of his incorrect assumption. But an aversion to three hour queues won the day and I was waved through!

Statues at Chisinau Airport. My flights home were via Istanbul, Hong Kong and Auckland. Sadly I caught Covid-19 on the return flights, so then had five days of isolation when home.

A third in a series of polls in Palestinian Territories. The poll of 1,500 Palestinians found:

• 67% support the 7 October attacks
• Only 9% think Hamas committed war crimes on 7 October
• 90% say they have not seen any videos of killings on October 7
• 61% wants Hamas to rule Gaza after the war
• Satisfaction with Hamas is at 75%
• Only 32% support a two state solution

I want a two state solution, but can’t see how one will ever happen.

Brooke van Velden announced:

Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says this coalition Government is delivering on our commitment to expand the terms of reference for the independent Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons Learned.

“There will be a second phase to the Royal Commission which features new commissioners and an expanded terms of reference. It will focus on matters of ongoing public concern including vaccine efficacy and safety, the extended lockdowns in Auckland and Northland, and the extent of disruption to New Zealanders’ health, education, and business,” says Ms van Velden. …

“The current commissioners, Professor Tony Blakely and John Whitehead, will resign in November after delivering a report on the first phase of the inquiry in November. I will confirm the appointment of new Commissioners, along with the detailed terms of reference, in August.

I can see why the Government has done this, but it is fairly inelegant to have effectively two different sets of Commissioners for different phases.

The two remaining Commissioners for the first phase are people of integrity, but both somewhat compromised. One was a frequent unofficial advisor to the Government and key officials on the response, and the other was a former Labour parliamentary staffer (and then civil servant). This will make it easy to dismiss their conclusions. However starting the whole thing again doesn’t appeal either.

Paul Goldsmith reports:

The Government is taking immediate action to support New Zealand’s media and content production sectors, while it develops a long-term reform programme, Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“Firstly, the Government will progress the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill with amendments, to support our local media companies to earn revenue for the news they produce. 

“I have looked closely at the design of the legislation and will be changing the approach to align more closely with the Australian digital bargaining code to give all companies greater certainty. …

“ACT have indicated they will not support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. However, the leaders of the three coalition parties have agreed ACT can hold a differing view. This means the bill will rely on the support of other parties to pass.

This is both an unprincipled and a stupid decision. I can handle principled stupid decisions and even unprincipled smart decisions but this is neither.

It is unprincipled because it is forcing successful companies in one industry (social networks and search engines) to fund failing companies in another industry (media). The only rationale for this is that Google and Meta have money and Stuff doesn’t. Will we see Netflix levied money to fund home video rental stores? Will we see Foodstuffs levied money to find Whitcoulls?

It is also a very stupid decision. Most media is already left leaning as most journalist have a left worldview. The Government is going to pass a law to fund a media that will oppose almost everything that supporters of the Government believe in. Even worse, it will set up a structural incentive for the media to become even more left leaning. Let’s say the Government forces Meta and Google to hand over $20 million a year to local media. Well Labour and Greens next election will insist that levy be doubled to $40 million, and of course that will create an institutional bias in favour of the parties that will benefit media the most. And Te Pati Maori will no doubt insist 50% of the left go to Maori media companies.

It is also very possible that the proposed law will fail, in that Meta will simply block all NZ news links rather than be forced to pay a levy.