Many decisions in Government are hard but some are very easy.
The UK Home Secretary would have been delighted when ISIS bride
Shamima Begum asked to come home so she could raise her son in the UK.
Begum is unrepetent saying she doesn’t regret her decision to join ISIL, supported the beheading of a man as he was an enemy of Islam and justified the Manchester arena bombing.
There is basically not a single person in the UK who wants her back there. So very easy decision for the Home Secretary to deny her entry and strip her citizenship (she is not stateless as her father is Bangladeshi).
But finally the media found one person who supports her coming back to the UK – the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn:
Jeremy Corbyn has weighed in for the first time on Shamima Begum being stripped of her British citizenship by insisting she not only has a right to remain in Britain but that she deserves “support”.
Jeremy Corbyn really is the gift that keeps on giving.
This is no surprise of course. His claims were so fantastical that they always seemed suspect.
The sad thing is that some people are victims of random violence due to their race or sexual orientation, and Smollett has undermined them.
The Herald reports:
Long-delayed monthly financial performance data shows district health boards are heading for a big combined deficit of $346 million.
How can this be?
Labour said that they were going to provide a huge boost in health funding. How come then that DHB deficits have blow out so much?
Marc Thiessen writes:
If the goal is to build a border wall, then President Trump has made the wrong decision at every turn. In early 2018, Trump had the opportunity to secure $25 billion in funding for his border wall in exchange for legal status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients. Instead of taking the deal, he blew up the negotiations with his “s—hole” countries remark and by demanding changes to legal immigration policy.
Then in June, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of fencing by an overwhelming bipartisan 26-to-5 vote. This could easily have passed the House and Senate. Instead, Trump later shut down the government over wall funding and demanded $5.7 billion. Result? After a disastrous 35-day shutdown, he got less — $1.38 billion — than he would have if he had just gone along with the bipartisan deal six months earlier.
Trump managed to turn a $25 billion funding package into a $1.4 billion one. That takes a special level of incompetence.
Now, the smart move for Trump would have been to pocket that $1.38 billion and bolster it with an additional $3.1 billion he could arguably use without a declaration of a national emergency — by reprogramming $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund and $2.5 billion from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction program. That would have given him $4.48 billion in wall funding — nearly the full amount he was demanding from Congress. Then, in December, he could demand more money with leverage over Democrats when an automatic sequester kicks in, forcing $55 billion in across-the-board cuts to domestic discretionary spending unless Trump agrees to raise spending caps.
Definitely would be a smart strategy. The Dems hate the automatic sequester cuts. They’d do a lot to avoid them.
Instead, Trump has made the wrong move once again — declaring a national emergency, despite warnings from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans that it could provoke a backlash from within his own party.
His order will face an immediate court challenge, which means he won’t be able to spend the emergency funds anytime soon, if at all. And if he prevails in court, it will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. If Trump can declare a national emergency to build a border wall Congress refused to fund, then the power of the president to override Congress’s power of the purse will be virtually unlimited. As Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) pointed out, a future liberal president could declare climate change a national emergency and “force the Green New Deal on the American people.” Or, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested, a Democratic president could one day declare the “epidemic of gun violence in America” a national emergency thanks to Trump’s action.
Very true. The fake national emergency, if upheld by the courts, will allow future Democratic Presidents to bypass Congress entirely for their pet projects.
Just as the Democrats’ decision to eliminate the filibuster on lifetime judicial appointments below the Supreme Court backfired — setting precedent for a Republican rules change to put two justices on the Supreme Court and secure its conservative majority for a generation — Republicans will rue the day if they go along with Trump’s executive power grab.
Mr Thiessen is right.
51 countries have now recognised Guaido as President of Venezuela, and a further seven recognise the National Assembly as the legitimate institution.
Of the 36 OECD members, 30 have rejected Maduro. Only Turkey supports him. NZ sits with just Switzerland, Mexico, Norway and South Korea in refusing to say which side they support.
The Tax Working Group report is here.
Key points:
PEPANZ commissioned NZIER to analyse the possible benefits and costs of the Government’s decision to ban future oil and gas exploration. The report is here.
They have found that over 25 years:
And will all this economic cost be worth it, for the environmental gain?
Well there is no environmental gain. The ban will increase global greenhouse gas emissions as the reduction in natural gas will see greater use of coal.
The Taxpayers Union has published a list of 19 things to look for in the CGT proposal due out at 11 am. They are:
The Herald reports:
A convicted killer and rapist who was a groomsman at David Bain’s wedding has admitted a second murder.
I wonder who was the best man?
Wilson has pleaded guilty to sexual violation in the High Court in Christchurch this morning.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to the life coach’s murder.
Justice Cameron Mander has indicated a sentence date of March 28.
The shocking news that Paul Russell Wilson (aka Paul Pounamu Tainui) committed a second murder in Christchurch in April last year – 24 years after he murdered former girlfriend Kimberly Schroder in Hokitika – was too much for Schroder’s father.
Gary James Schroder, 67, died in a suspected suicide just hours after Wilson made his first court appearance on April 10 last year.
“Paul Wilson now has the blood of two young ladies on his hands. And also the blood of my dearly beloved [relative],” one family member told the Herald at the time.
So will he be let out again to kill for a third time?
Wilson was sentenced to 15 years non-parole, though on appeal that was reduced to 13 years.
His parole was granted at his fifth time of asking in December 2010, with his behaviour described as “exemplary and faultless”.
If he had not been given parole, Nicole Tuxford would still be alive. It shows that you can do and say the right things in prison, but not fundamentally change.
As this excellent article points out, Wilson ticked all the boxes. He behaved in prison. He did all the courses. He got a job when out. But deep down he still had a view that if he was attracted to a woman, he had a right to her.
Stuff reports:
The Crown will seek life imprisonment without parole when he is sentenced on March 28.
Surely he will qualify? The families of his victims should not have to go through parole hearings fighting to keep him inside. They should have the security of knowing he will never be allowed out again.
He has shown that he can’t be rehabilitated. It is time for the courts to use the sentence available in law to them and lock Wilson up for good.
Stuff reports:
The public housing waitlist has rocketed past 10,000 as more people wait longer for public housing.
At the end of 2018 fully 10,712 eligible households were waiting for state or social housing – 73 per cent more than a year ago, and over three times the number waiting at the end of 2015.
So Labour’s first year in office saw the waiting list increase 73%.
The average time to house those people was 157.5 days, up from 122.4 days a year prior – but this was somewhat skewed by a few long applications. The median time to house was 98 days, up from 58 a year prior.
And the median waiting time has almost doubled from 58 days to 98 days.
What’s interesting is on every metric the housing situation has got far worse for those in need. Yet the daily deluge of sob stories has mainly dried up since the election.
The Guardian reports:
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont whose 2016 presidential campaign helped energize the progressive movement and reshaped the Democratic party, has entered the 2020 race for the White House.
It will be interesting to see how Bernie goes.
I quite like him because he actually believes in what he says. I prefer an honest wrong person to a dishonest person. He has been pushing socialism all his life, like Corbyn.
His problem is that a lot of other candidates are now pretending to be as left wing as him. It is no longer left Bernie vs moderate Hillary. He has to compete with Warren and Gillibrand.
Stuff reports:
Hughes said he has also written to chief executives reminding them of their responsibilities to maintain political neutrality.
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has written to public services bosses to remind them it is “never okay” to collect data on political leanings.
Earlier this month Stuff revealed that Inland Revenue was asking the public about their political leanings in a $125,000 research project undertaken by Colmar Brunton.
On Tuesday Hughes said he was examining the matter at IRD and “as well as other government departments”.
The “examination”, which is being conducted internally, is expected to take six weeks.
“I have told them that it is never okay for a government agency to seek or collect information on the political leanings or party affiliations of citizens,” Hughes said in a statement.
“Political neutrality is a fundamental principle of the Public Service – one that cannot be compromised for other interests.
A very good response from the Commissioner. Will be interesting to learn the results of the examination.
Newshub reports:
And New Zealand is also opposed to a CGT. In our latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll, we asked voters if they’d support the Government imposing a capital gains tax.
54 percent said no
32 percent said yes
14 percent didn’t know
Labour voters are split. 42 percent do not support a CGT, while 44 percent do.
So over half are against and just one third in favour. And this is even before people know the details. As people realise some family homes will get taxed and that is is a de facto estate tax, the numbers will be even stronger against.
What should worry Labour is even their own voters are split 50/50 on it. They run the risk of losing votes big time if they push ahead.
In 2013 the WCC voted to restore the Town Hall at a cost of $46 million. Even that amount was seen as very expensive when you consider Wellington has other musical venues such as the Michael Fowler Centre.
Then it became $60 million and in 2017 increased again to $90 million. And now in 2019 it is $112 million. What will it take to convince the lemming Crs to say no?
There are only 70,000 households in Wellington. $112 million is $1,600 per household. Imagine what you could do with that money.
But the $112 million is not the end of it. Stuff reports:
Councillors will face a vote next week on whether to approve $112.4m over four years for the project with costs expected to rise beyond this.
Elected members would be asked to approve a sizeable contingency fund, the exact size of which would remain undisclosed until “risks have materialised”.
If it has already double in cost, one can only imagine how much more this contingency is? The whole thing could end up costing $150 million which is $2,000 per household.
A guest post by Belv:
Dear Kiwibloggers,
On Sunday 3 March a Parliament XI will be taking on Wellington’s Eastern Suburbs Roosters in the ultimate compete for cash charity T20 match – the Mullet Bash.
The feature event of the Roosters’ fundraiser in support of Te Omanga Hospice, the local lads will be rocking homegrown mullets carefully sculptured from a catalogue of international cricket’s most famous lids. Think Boon, Botham, Warne, Ranatunga, Gower and Morrison from their glory days, with matching physiques, a bit less plumage and substantially less talent.
The Parliament XI is set to be co-captained by Hutt South MP Chris Bishop and Mana MP Kris Faafoi, with the full line-up yet to be leaked to the media.
The Mullet Bash is a compete for cash game, with every run hit (thanks TAB) and wicket taken (thanks Senate SHJ) worth real dollars. Though that money is currently directed at the Roosters efforts and we are reluctant to share our hard earned bounty with the MPs. If there are any businesses or flush individuals out there willing to sponsor the Parliament XI’s batting and bowling efforts (probably won’t cost you much) then we want to hear from you.
Or you can donate to the cause individually. We’ll take your money anyway it comes. And if you have any decent (good-humoured) sledges for the MPs then leave them in the comments and we might steal them.
For full details, check out mulletbash.squarespace.com or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
A big shout out to the team at Stun who did our design work and Carve Barbershop who are tasked with the biggest job of all – shaping our mullets.
Game details
When: Sunday 3 March
Where: Kilbirnie Park
Time: 4pm start
A donation BBQ will be running and a charity auction will be held during the innings break.
The Guardian reports:
The former Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova has been criticised for “disturbing, upsetting, and deeply transphobic” comments after she argued that allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sporting tournaments was “insane and cheating”.
The tennis player and gay rights campaigner first drew criticism from equalities activists and trans athletes when she tweeted in December: “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”
Writing in the Sunday Times, Navratilova said she had subsequently promised to keep quiet on the subject until she had done some research on it. “Well, I’ve now done that and, if anything, my views have strengthened,” she wrote.“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.
“It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”
This is the crux of the issue. Politeness, courtesy and empathy all support treating transgender people with respect and addressing them in line with their gender identity.
But does that mean that they are legally a woman, who can compete in women’s professional sports?
I think the best solution to this issue of competing rights is to change the categories in elite and professional sport to “women” and “open”. Anyone at all can compete in the open category – men, women, trans-women etc.
But the “women” category is restricted to people who are biologically female.
Newshub reports:
There’s a major roadblock within the Beehive over the role genetic engineering (GE) could play in a predator-free New Zealand by 2050.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has stopped any and all work being done to use GE technology, despite official advice suggesting it could be used to help rid New Zealand of predators.
This is revealing. The Greens care more about opposing science than they do about making New Zealand predator free.
Newshub’s also obtained a number of emails written by the minister that reveal her personal position on the technology.
In one email, she wrote: “Please be assured that the department is clear about my expectations regarding genetic technologies. It has informed me that there is no mammalian gene drive technology research currently occurring in New Zealand.
“I have also required Predator Free 2050 Ltd to carry out appropriate due diligence on any co-funded projects before agreeing on any contracts, and have explicitly required them not to be involved in any research with genetically modified organisms and technologies such as CRISPR or gene editing.”
In another email, the minister made a similar comment: “I have been clear about my expectations regarding such technologies.”
So the Minister is personally intervening to ban research that could help NZ become predator free. This shows you how much they really care about the environment.
The Greens cry out on climate change that the science is settled. But they ignore the science is also settled on GE. Sir Peter Gluckman was reported last year as saying:
Marking the end of his nine-year stint as chief science adviser, Sir Peter said the science had shown genetic modification was safe.
“The science is as settled as it will be,” Sir Peter told TVNZ’s Q + A today.
“That is, it’s safe, that there are no significant ecological or health concerns associated with the use of advanced genetic technologies.”
And the Royal Society:
Professor Barry Scott, co-chair of the Royal Society expert panel on GE, says there’s a lot of “scaremongery” about genetic modification and many haven’t changed their opinions since the early 2000s. He told The Project GE has huge potential to cure illnesses such as bone marrow cancer, as well as conservation of the environment. GE could even be used to remove allergens from food, making it safer for people with intolerances.
Professor Scott doesn’t think Kiwis should be concerned about the potential dangers of GE.
“There’s millions of hectares of crops being grown around the world for 20-plus years now with no adverse effects.”
So again the Greens are campaigning against science, even though GE could be used to protect NZ’s native birds from predators.
Labour MP Trevor Mallard makes clear he thinks the Government is wrong on this issue.
A guest post from Alastair Frizzell:
The current call to eat lentils not meat sounds like a simple way to save the plant from global warming. Like many simple solutions to complex problems its not quite so simple. If you change from a meat based diet to a plant based one you may be doing more harm to the planet than good.
Our Dairy, beef and sheep production is grass based. Grass pasture is sown down and then maintained for between five and ten years. After that time production tends to decline so pasture is renewed. This is normally done by killing the old grass and weeds and then sowing new pasture. Cultivation and sometimes chemicals are used in renewal.
If we grow lentils, cabbages or grain these crops need to be sown each year, they are all annuals, typically sown in the spring and then harvested in summer or autumn. Over the winter a cover crop is grown to stop nitrogen and fertilizer leaching. The soil needs to be cultivated. With current technology this means tractors and trucks powered by diesel motors.To sow a crop an average of 70 litres of diesel per hectare is burned for cultivation and seeding. This fuel is converted to carbon dioxide at a rate of 2.6kg of carbon dioxide for every litre burnt. Harvesting is also energy intensive with typically more than 20 litres per hectare burned. Each crop cycle releases 230kg of carbon dioxide, because we do two seedings a year over 400kg of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere each year. Pastural farming with grazing animals has much lower CO2 emissions from cultivation.
If we replace the crop with cows, at three on the hectare each cow will produce about 100kg of methane a year or 300kg per hectare. This is equivalent to between 6,000 and 10,000 kg of CO2 per hectare. It’s not looking good for the cows but life is not that simple.The methane produced by the cows breaks down into CO2 and is absorbed by the grass that feeds the cows. The methane from the cows reaches an equilibrium in the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide from producing lentils builds up and increases over time.
In the short term the lentils win. In the long term not so. After about 10 years the amount of methane in the atmosphere will stabilise at about 40.000kg, of CO2. After 25 years still 40,000kg from the cows, but now 10,000kg from lentils. After 100 years 40,000kg from the cows and 40,000kg. from the lentils. Beyond this greenhouse gas effect from lentils is worse than from cows.
If you want a short term feel good fix sure stop eating meat and dairy products. If you want the world to be here for your grandchildren maybe you need to think again.
The Guardian reports:
Seven Labour MPs, including Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger, have resigned from the party saying they will sit as a new independent group.
Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said it had been a “difficult, painful but necessary decision” for them all.
The other five MPs are Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey.
Berger said she had become “embarrassed and ashamed” to be in the Labourparty because of its failure to tackle antisemitism in its ranks.
I’m surprised this didn’t happen earlier. Their leader has allied himself in the past with every terrorist group there is that vows to wipe out Israel.
A Palmerston North reader sent this in. Not surprised that Labour adverts show up here – it is a sensible place if you want people interested in politics.
What I find more interesting is that MPs are doing paid advertisements for coffee meetings. Also rather surprised they don’t have a date on the advertisement.
A guest post by Camryn Brown:
“We must fix wealth inequality” appears to be an idea with rising support and “tax” appears to be the solution those supporters have in mind. I would argue that anyone proposing to fix anything must take care to avoid making the problem worse. This is as simple as fixing the right thing and not breaking things that’re working well. I would argue that tax looks like a poor solution to wealth inequality when you really unpack how wealth inequality works to have negative outcomes.
Let’s start from the premise that wealth inequality creates problems such as a breakdown in social cohesion which in turn creates mental health crises, violence, and so on… and that we are all in agreement that we don’t want society to break down like that. OK? OK.
If we are to fix or avoid these negative outcomes of wealth inequality, we must first understand how it has those negative outcomes. Here’s where the prevailing wisdom gets it wrong. It’s not because of material deprivation. As our rich are richer than ever before, so our poor are also richer than ever before. Our societies and economies have never been better at meeting the material needs of our poorest citizens. This is because we aren’t living in a zero-sum game. Bill Gates having more does not mean you or I have any less. Indeed, it is the opportunity to achieve unequal wealth that motivates people to work hard, be innovative and creative, and invest well – things that create new and better jobs, stronger economies, governments that can afford to do more, and prosperity in general.
So, then, by what mechanism does this good process turn bad? How does wealth creation reduce social cohesion? The answer is simple. It’s jealousy. If I have what I need but still feel bad because you have so much more, that’s simple jealousy. There isn’t an economically rational reason; there is an emotionally irrational one. This jealousy is sometimes dressed up as being morally justified – “we are all humans, each equally valid with existences of equal worth, so how can we justify this wealth disparity?” – but this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. First, it again depends on the false concept of wealth as being fixed or limited rather than limitlessly created. If your extreme wealth is not depriving me in any way, how can it be an affront to my existence? Second, our long-established concepts of morality explicitly warn us against this way of thinking. I’m not Christian, for example, but I know “thou shalt not covet” is one of its ten primary rules – rules clearly intended to promote social cohesion, which is our aim.
This being the case, I question why taxing the wealthy is the go-to solution. It doesn’t resolve the jealousy, it actually buys into it and validates it. Do we really want to build a society on giving in to negative emotion? Shouldn’t we focus on reducing the tendency to feel jealous rather than giving in and eliminating what people feel jealous of? To me, the necessary solutions look like pride in one’s own achievements, satisfaction in one’s own comforts, a less materialistic conception of success and happiness, and so on. These are not simple fixes, even compared to tax legislation, because we cannot simply put better thoughts into people’s heads. Achieving a society that is stronger than jealousy requires both honesty and hard work. As a society we seem to have convinced ourselves that it’s important to treat all values as equal, but some values that work better than other values and we should be willing to put in the effort to say so, explain why, and live the example. As a society we seem to have convinced ourselves that competition is hurtful and to be avoided, but it is too beneficial to cast it aside and we should be willing to be hurt by it and to support those who are hurt by it rather than taking the easy way out.
Taxing the rich doesn’t address what’s not working about wealth inequality, yet it does inhibit what is working about it. The true solution to the negative consequences of wealth equality is to be, and to create, better humans.