Chris Trotter writes:
The political consensus at the beginning of 2017 – election year – is that the National-led Government will hold on to power.
Not in its own right, as might have happened had John Key led them into battle, but with sufficient parliamentary support to govern comfortably. The identity and character of National’s support will likely prove the most intriguing electoral story of the year.
The most significant political event of 2017, however, could well be the collapse of the Labour Party and the emergence of the Greens as New Zealand’s leading party of the centre-left.
Here’s a test for readers. Can you name a major policy difference between Labour and Greens?
When Labour were in Government, there were many areas where the Greens differed from Labour. But Labour in opposition has adopted screeds of Green policy they used to oppose (such as paying the in work tax credit to people not in work).
After a downwards trend for around 30 years, we may have seen it reverse. The toll has now increased for three years in a row.
This is the more useful graph, showing the toll per 10,000 vehicles. But even on this one you see the last three years looking different to the ones before.
The Herald has a list of baby names rejected by DIA. They include:
I wonder what the correlation is between children whose parents chose a name that is rejected by DIA, and children who end up abused?
Stuff reports:
William Christopher, who played the unassuming US Army chaplain, Father Mulcahy, struggling to bring spiritual comfort to an anarchic surgical unit during the Korean War on the long-running hit TV series M*A*S*H, died on Saturday (local time). He was 84.
I watched M*A*S*H growing up as a kid, and have rewatched it often over the last 30 years. A great show, and the final is the most watched non sports show of all time in the US – 125 million viewers.
The death of Christopher made me wonder how many other actors were still alive, and what had happened to them all. Here’s the list:
So five dead and six still living.
A few days ago Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu made an angry phone call to Murray McCully threatening some sort of retaliation if NZ supported the UN Security Council resolution.
Today it is reported Netanyahu is being questioned by detectives on suspicion of illegally accepting valuable gifts.
Even for McCully, that is impressively quick work 🙂
I don’t often blog on blogs at The Standard, but sometimes they can’t be ignored. Now this particular blog is authored not by some low level nobody but a senior Labour Party officer and activist, and purported nominee for New Lynn.
Mr Savage has worked out why John Key resigned. He quotes a Suzie Dawson, who claims to be a NZ journalist seeking asylum in Russia. And according to Suzie, Kim Dotcom has claimed that he has an even bigger moment of truth – two terabytes of e-mails from NZ Government servers. And these are even bigger than the Podesta e-mails, which is why John Key resigned.
Now Mr Savage says he is not sure if this is all true, but goes on to say he has verified Dawson is seeking asylum and:
“she did write at Spinbin and the quality of her work is high. My impression of her taste grew considerably when I saw that she linked to Simon Louisson’s excellent Standard post on the Panama Papers.”
So he has decided to share his conspiracy theory with the world. Now I have to admit I had not heard of Suzie Dawson before. And I will admit to an instinctive bias that anyone who claims they need to seek asylum in Russia from New Zealand is probably barking mad. But hey I may be wrong.
So let’s look at her own words from this interview:
I must thank Mickey Savage for bringing this to our attention. May I suggest they make her a regular guest blogger.
News.com.au reports:
TURKISH police have released the first picture of the prime suspect in the Istanbul nightclub attack.
The unnamed man is described as being from East Turkestan, Afghanistan or Chechnya and Turkish intelligence services reportedly believe that he is a member of the East Turkestan branch of ISIS. His nationality is unknown.
The photograph of him comes after chilling footage revealed a gunman opening fire on revellers at the exclusive Reina nightclub in Istanbul during New Year celebrations.
He killed 39 people and injured another 69 partygoers as he stormed the club, armed with an AK-47 and opened fire at random.
He was heard screaming the Arabic words “Allahu Akbar” after he entered the nightclub.
Possibly the least surprising part of the story.
It looks like this happened just after the New year so won’t be included in the catalog of Islamic terror attacks in 2016.
The count for 2016 is:
This is actually am improvement over 2015 which had 2,866 attacks killing 27,628 people.
Fairfax have bravely made their 20 annual political predictions. They are:
1. John Key will feature in the Queen’s Birthday honours list, but as befits the man who reinstated knights and dames he will be dubbed “Sir John” rather than join the ranks of the untitled – but supposedly more prestigious – Order of New Zealand.
2. Former Labour MP Shane Jones will shy away from another term as an economic ambassador and instead signal a return to politics by throwing his hat in the ring with his old mate Winston Peters and NZ First.
3. Labour’s Raymond Huo will return as an MP before the election – and be given a winnable place on the party’s list as it seeks to rectify its diversity deficit.
4. ACT will fail to increase its MP count from one, although National will again offer it a lifeline in Epsom.
5. The Maori Party’s co-leader Marama Fox will fail to win a seat, either as an electorate MP or on the party’s list, condemning her to be a one term MP.
6. Barack Obama will visit New Zealand in 2017.
7. The May Budget will see National promise movements in the $48,000 and $70,000 tax bracket thresholds – but pledge to only bring tax cuts in in full if re-elected.
8. Gareth Morgan’s The Opportunities Party (TOP) will score less than 3 per cent and fail to win any seats.
9. The Greens will do little better – and little worse – than their 2014 result.
10. Judith Collins and Steven Joyce will clash over the party’s economic direction – and Joyce will prevail.
11. Chris Finlayson, Peter Dunne and Annette King will call it a day.
12. One National and one Labour MP in electorate seats will leave within six months before the general election, under an unspoken deal that will maintain the voting balance in the House.
13. The Greens will be given a free run in some electorates, under a deal with Labour, but will still fail to win any constituency seats.
14. Louise Upston and David Bennett will prove the weakest links in the English ministry.
15. Jonathan Coleman will take over the foreign affairs portfolio from May, but only after an internal tussle with at least two other ministers for the plum job.
16. Winston Peters will not be prime minister, nor be in line to be, under any deal he does to support the next Government.
17. Economic growth will top 4 per cent during 2017.
18. Auckland house prices will be lower in real terms by Christmas than they were at the start of 2017.
19. There will be one more political bombshell in 2017 that will change the course of the election and install Andrew Little as prime minister.
20. At least two party leaders will be heading for the door by Christmas.
Some comments from me:
Stuff reports:
Five cyclists died on the roads in 2016 – the lowest annual number recorded in 25 years, latest road toll figures show.
The Cycling Action Network hailed the preliminary figures as “encouraging”.
CAN spokesperson Patrick Morgan said the decline was a reflection of more people riding and becoming accustomed to cyclists.
Nice to see the cycling toll so low. A pity the overall road toll looks to be increasing.
As more people take up cycling on New Zealand roads, more ambitious government projects for safe cycling would be needed, he said.
But he praised the transport minister’s program for creating new urban cycleways.
“There has never been a better Minister of Transport for cycling than Simon Bridges.”
High praise.
Stuff reports:
Jetstar is suspending its direct flights from Wellington to Melbourne, citing a lack of passenger demand.
It’s passengers will need to travel via Auckland or Christchurch from March 1, although Air NZ and Qantas still offer direct flights.
Those who have already booked Jetstar flights for March or later will be offered a full refund or the option of the extra stop en route.
“We launched our direct Melbourne-Wellington service nearly two years ago, however, despite continued efforts by Jetstar and local partners to promote the flights, we haven’t seen the passenger demand we’d hoped for,” a Jetstar spokesperson confirmed on Friday.
So if existing services are being dropped due to lack of demand, doesn’t that mean you should be very wary of the projections that a longer runway will lead to many more services, flights and passengers?
The Secretary of the Refugee Council of New Zealand is a Mr Kaileshan Thanabalasingham.
A Kaileshan Thanabalasingham was deported from Canada in 2006 as the reputed leader of a Tamil gang that killed several youths in the 1990s.
Tamil Canadian reported:
The reputed leader of a Tamil gang whose battle with rival gang members on the streets of Toronto claimed the lives of more than a dozen youths in the late 1990s, and once led to a midday shooting on Highway 404, was deported late last night to Sri Lanka.
Kaileshan Thanabalasingham was one of the main targets of Project 1050, a joint police and immigration investigation that ended with the arrest of close to 51 alleged gang members on Oct. 18, 2001.
The majority of the accused were charged under a section of the immigration act that prohibits involvement in a criminal organization, marking the first time street gangs were classified as “organized crime” under immigration laws.
Known in Toronto’s Tamil community as Kailesh, the 36-year-old father was accused of leading the VVT gang, a west Toronto group that was formed in the early 1990s and named for Valvettithurai, a northern Sri Lankan town.
Thanabalasingham denied he led the VVT, or that his criminal convictions — possessing a machete in 1996 and a 1998 conspiracy to commit assault for trying to acquire guns for others — were related to gang membership.
If this is the same person (and I am informed his year of birth is the same, and he has family in Toronto) then you wonder how someone deported from Canada gets entry into New Zealand?
Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe reports:
When the Cold War ended 25 years ago, the Soviet Union vanished into the ash heap of history. That left the West’s “useful idiots” — Lenin’s term for the ideologues and toadies who could always be relied on to justify or praise whatever Moscow did — in search of other socialist thugs to fawn over. Many found a new heartthrob in Hugo Chavez, the anti-Yanqui rabble-rouser who was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 and in short order had transformed the country from a successful social democracy into a grim and corrupt autocracy.
So who toasted Chavez?
In a Salon piece titled “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle,” David Sirota declared that the Venezuelan ruler, with his “full-throated advocacy of socialism,” had “racked up an economic record that . . . American president[s] could only dream of achieving.” The Guardian offered “Three cheers for Chavez.” Moviemaker Oliver Stone filmed a documentary gushing over “the positive changes that have happened economically in all of South America” because of Venezuela’s socialist government. And when Chavez died in 2013, Jimmy Carter extolled the strongman for “improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.”
And how is the miracle going?
Venezuela this Christmas is sunk in misery, as it was last Christmas, and the Christmas before that. Venezuelans, their economy wrecked by statism, face crippling shortages of everything from food and medicine to toilet paper and electricity. Violent crime is out of control. Shoppers are forced to stand in lines for hours outside drugstores and supermarkets — lines that routinely lead to empty shelves, or that break down in fistfights, muggings, and mob looting. Just last week the government deployed 3,000 troops to restore order after frantic rioters rampaged through shops and homes in the southeastern state of Bolivar.
In the beautiful country that used to boast the highest standard of living in Latin America, patients now die in hospitals for lack of basic health care staples: soap, gloves, oxygen, drugs. In some medical wards, there isn’t even water to wash the blood from operating tables.
True equality comrades.
Socialism invariably kills and impoverishes. Gushing oil revenues amid a global energy boom could temporarily disguise the corrosion caused by a government takeover of market functions. But only temporarily. The Chavez/Maduro “Bolivarian revolution” has been economic poison, just like every other Marxist “revolution” from Lenin’s Russia to Kim Il Sung’s North Korea to the Castros’ Cuba.
How often does a country have to try it and fail for people to learn it doesn’t work.
The government in Caracas, meanwhile, clings tightly to its socialist dogma, blaming the country’s woes on Colombia’s mafia or greedy businessmen. A fortnight ago, government agents raided a toy distributor, confiscating nearly 4 million toys on the grounds that the company was planning to sell them at inflated prices. The regime says it will make the toys available at below-market prices to the poor — thereby ensuring that in Venezuela next Christmas, toys won’t be available at any price. If nothing else, Venezuelan socialism has accomplished this much: It has transformed the Grinch from fiction into reality.
Sadly for the locals, the next election is a long time away.
Jeremy Clarkson writes:
OVER the past few years, my wife’s phone has been hacked.
Friends have been pursued across ploughed fields by the paparazzi.
Every girl I ever spoke to was billed in the next day’s papers as a “mystery blonde”.
And every little thing I ever did was twisted by wilfully obtuse journalists to make it look like I was Hitler.
Newspapers, and the people who produce them and write them and own them, are a constant thorn in my side, an unending headache, and I sometimes lay awake at night wondering what the editor of the Daily Mail would look like without a head.
So you’d expect me to be whooping for joy at the news that over the Christmas break, while you’re making merry with the party poppers and the crackers, various shadowy Government people are drawing up plans to bring the nation’s newspapers to heel.
But he isn’t.
But I’m not. I’m horrified to the point of panicky breathlessness. And you should be too.
If you were asked to define what is actually meant by a “free country”, you may say that it’s the freedom to worship whatever God you hold dear or the freedom to vote in an election.
But actually, the keystone of freedom is a press that is completely and utterly free from any sort of government interference.
Beware politicians who want the Government to either fund the media or control it.
If any newspaper fails to sign up to a new regulatory body — it’s called Impress and it’s funded in part by Max Mosley — then they will be hounded into bankruptcy by the most disgusting plan to emerge from Britain since the invention of the concentration camp.
It is this.
If a newspaper prints a completely true story about a government minister — or anyone else for that matter — he can sue.
And the paper will be forced to pay his legal costs.
EVEN IF HE LOSES THE CASE.
This means that newspapers will be full of nothing but the loveliness of Theresa May’s hair and how Rolf Harris has many good points.
Glad we don’t have this in NZ.
Fairfax score their 2016 predictions:
1. Phil Goff will win the Auckland mayoralty, triggering a by-election in his Mt Roskill seat. Not the hardest one to get right, but who could have known how spectacularly the Right would screw up the mayoral race, leaving Goff home and hosed. 10/10.
2. Immigration will be the big issue of 2016, in NZ and worldwide, under the twin pressures of terrorism and rising unemployment. Definitely on the right track on most counts, as the refugee wave swept over Europe, influencing the Brexit vote, and Donald Trump proposed a ban on Muslims and reached for some bricks and grouting to keep the Mexicans out. The issue sparked up at home too, with Labour dipping its toe into a pool that Winston Peters has been paddling in for years. The main economic trigger here though was housing, not unemployment, so marks off for that. 7.5/10
3. One party leader will be replaced – or signal they will go. Well, where to start with this one? Cynics might suggest we had different names on our list ahead of prime minister John Key. Others have said that if someone was so smart they knew Key was leaving they should be sacked for not writing about it sooner. All we can say is we will take the 10/10.
4. The Government’s books for 2015/16 will show a deficit when the numbers are known in October, and the 2016 Budget will include significant spending on reform in the area of Child Youth and Family. The reforms are well under way and a big chunk of money – about $200 million – was put towards helping vulnerable children out of $350m earmarked to reform the system. Yet here was no deficit for the year, but a $1.8 billion surplus. So half marks only. 5/10
5. John Key will wind back his shock-jock appearances, but only after one final dare involving dancing, underpants and a street corner. We contend we were joking about the dancing and underpants, and even he wouldn’t do that. But the PM certainly learned his lesson and sharply toned down the silliness. 10/10
6. The current flag will triumph easily, taking 60 per cent of the vote to head off the black and blue silver fern Kyle Lockwood design in the March referendum. The final result was 56.6 per cent to 43.2 per cent in favour of the existing flag. Rough enough for 9/10?
7. Significant steps will be taken towards allowing the medicinal use of cannabis. The debate has heated up further, fuelled by Helen Kelly’s advocacy before she died. There is a sense the public and political mood is swinging in favour, but no formal steps were taken. 0/10
8. A visit to New Zealand by United States President Barack Obama will be scheduled for 2016. Golf anyone? We are blaming poor wording – “in 2016” not “for 2016” would have been closer to the mark, given his widely-reported interest in coming after his presidency ends on January 20. But even then nothing has been “scheduled” so we ended up in the bunker on that one. 0/10
9. Pharmac will get more cash allowing it to fund new drugs, such as Keytruda, but the Government will stay out of decisions on specific drugs. Just like it said on the box. 10/10.
10. New Zealand will send SAS troops to Iraq, and not only as VIP protection. It’s a wise a citizen who knows where, and why, the elite forces are deployed. And there were on-the-ground reports by international media, which were denied by the Government, that they were being used in roles beyond VIP protection, In the spirit of neither confirm or deny we are claiming 5/10.
11. The review of security services will see the GCSB and SIS get greater powers of surveillance. They did. Nothing more to see here. Nudge nudge. 10/10.
12. The freshwater issue will spark up, causing a headache for National MPs and putting their relationship with the Maori Party under stress. Not as much as expected, and the issue stayed subterranean because the Government has largely hosed it down – and postponed the big calls. There was an attempt to rark the issue up by some fringe political players. And there was trouble between National and the Maori Party over Resource Management Act reform and the Kermadecs sanctuary decision, but fresh water was not the trigger. 2/10
13. ACT leader David Seymour’s “end of life choice” bill will be drawn from the ballot (relying on chance makes this a particularly fraught prediction) and then pass its first reading. Sometimes you just have to accept that picking lottery results is – well, a lottery. 0/10.
14. At least one MP will announce their engagement to be married. National’s Tamaki MP Simon O-Connor and Labour’s Rimutaka MP Chris Hipkins both popped the question. 10/10.
15. Labour candidate Michael Wood will be sworn in as MP for Mt Roskill – but will not be the first to win a by-election this year. Wood duly bolted in in Mt Roskill, but all those other MPs who are heading for the exit – including Maurice Williamson in Pakuranga and David Cunliffe in New Lynn – have pledged to hang around until closer to the general election to avoid a by-election in their seats. 5/10
16. Labour leader Andrew Little will firm up his plans to run in the Rongotai seat now held by Annette King. Late in the year King fulfilled the first leg of the double by confirming she would vacate the seat to go on the list in 2017. Her hand-picked successor Paul Eagle was quick off the mark to express an interest.suggesting when Little finally firms up his intentions it will be “no” to throwing his hat in the ring.. 3/10
17. Speaker David Carter will head off to foreign diplomatic pastures, opening the way for Gerry Brownlee to inherit the wig of office. The inside gossip was that Carter was in line for the London post, but the move was scotched by NZ First leader Winston Peters. Now former governor-general Sir Jerry Mateparae has got the gig. Brownlee is so far unmoved. 0/10
18. An MP will find himself or herself giving evidence in court. Whanganui MP Chester Borrows has been charged over the use of his car during a TPP protest. 10/10
19. Pandas! Discussed yet again, but Key finally put the kibosh on the whole idea of bringing some to New Zealand. Reason enough right there to quit and make way for a new leader. We like pandas a great deal so can we have 3/10 for effort?
20. Australia’s deportation of Kiwi criminals will hit the headlines again when one of them goes off the rails on this side of the ditch, placing New Zealand politicians in the firing line. it’s fair to say the issue did keep bubbling along, with the Opposition taking shots at the Government’s handling of the diplomatic side with Australia. A deportee was involved in an alleged murder that hit the headlines and was on the agenda at a meeting between john Key and his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull. But further details have not been made public. More generally it was reported 30 per cent of deportees re-offended.. 7/10
So it’s a fairly par 116.5/200.
d
The Telegraph reports:
President Barack Obama has suggested that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is “disintegrating” because it has lost touch with “fact and reality”.
A good analysis.
Mr Obama said that the Democrats are not at risk of “Corbynisation” and that even the party’s more left-wing figures like Bernie Sanders are more moderate than Jeremy Corbyn.
I think almost everyone in political life is more moderate than Corbyn.
In an interview with David Axelrod, who advised the former Labour leader Ed Miliband, Mr Obama was asked if he feared that the democrats could fall apart like Labour.
He replied: “I don’t worry about that, partly because I think the Democratic Party has stayed pretty grounded in fact and reality.”
Mr Axelrod asked if Mr Obama was concerned about the “Corbynisation” of the Democratic party, after Labour “disintegrated in the face of their defeat”.
Mr Obama said that even Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator who finished runner-up to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, was “pretty centrist” compared to Mr Corbyn.
I guess Chavez is more left than Corbyn, but could be close.
The Washington Post reports:
Drake has sold only about 300,000 physical CDs. But the album enjoyed 1.2 million digital album sales, 5 million digital singles sales and an astonishing 2.8 billion audio streams. Nielsen divides digital singles by 10 and audio streams by 1,500 to create new numbers that equal the revenue from a single album sale.
For over a decade the music industry fought the Internet as their business model was CDs. But now CDs make up 8% of revenue for Drake. Digital sales make up 44% and online streaming 48%.
Looking at the health of the music industry in this way — with a mishmash of financial ratios that attempts to capture how people consume music today — shows that overall music sales are up 3 percent through 50 weeks in 2016, compared with last year, Bakula said.
So, yes, traditional album sales are down 16 percent. That’s bad. (Interestingly, digital album sales fell faster than physical album sales, too.) Digital single sales are down 25 percent. That’s even worse. But revenue from on-demand digital streams exploded 77 percent over last year, reaching 234 billion streams.
This shows that the business model keeps changing – not just from physical to digital but from sales to streaming.
The 2016 data may vary slightly once the final month is averaged but it sure looks like a trend to me.
The data is from NASA Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature records.
GISTEMP Team, 2016: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dataset accessed 2016-12-30 at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/.
The full list is here. Three Dames and four Knights, being:
DNZM
To be Dames Companion of the said Order:
Ms Valerie Kasanita Adams, ONZM, of Auckland. For services to athletics.
Miss Georgina Kingi, QSO, of Hastings. For services to Māori and education.
The Honourable Frances Helen Wilde, CNZM, QSO, of Wellington. For services to the State and the community.
KNZM
To be Knights Companion of the said Order:
Distinguished Professor Richard Lewis Maxwell Faull, ONZM, of Auckland. For services to medical research.
Mr Brian Joseph Roche, of Wellington. For services to the State and business.
The Honourable Toke Tufukia Talagi, of Alofi, Niue. For services to Niue.
Mr David Arthur Rhodes Williams, QC, of Auckland. For services to international law and international arbitration.
Dame Valerie will be the most prominent one of course. Numbers awarded in each category are:
Fran O’Sullivan writes:
It is fundamentally absurd to believe Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to declare war on New Zealand in retaliation for co-sponsoring the successful UN resolution against Israel. Netanyahu has far bigger fish to fry than New Zealand.
Fran is correct.
What is at issue now is the controversial report citing two unnamed “Western diplomats” that said Netanyahu had phoned Foreign Minister Murray McCully and asked him to neither support the resolution nor to promote it.
“If you continue to promote this resolution from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences,” the Israeli prime minister is reported to have said to McCully.
Some have misread the reported comments and interpreted them in an overly literal fashion suggesting Israel has declared war on NZ.
Obviously it hasn’t and won’t.
Indeed. First of all the reported comments are that Israel would regard it as NZ declaring war on Israel, not that Israel would declare war on NZ. A vital difference. Also I understand the original story in Hebrew has been lost in translation a bit and it is more that the Israeli PM said that NZ voting for the resolution would be an aggressive act or act of aggression.
So yes a very strong response from the Israeli PM, but not declaration of war or anything close.
Readers might be interested in the full text of the Security Council resolution on Israel and settlements, as opposed to what some people claim was in it.
Personally I support Israel around 95% of the time, especially when it comes to their own security. But I’ve never been persuaded that settlements on occupied territory are a good idea, or will lead to a two state solution. A one state solution is worse for Israel as that would mean having to give citizenship to those living in those areas and Jews would become the minority in Israel.
Hamas are evil and Fatah corrupt and the Palestinian leadership bear most of the blame for there being no peace settlement. They have rejected some very good offers in the past, and I remain sceptical that their leadership are interested in a two state solution.
However two wrongs do not make a right. In my view the settlements are wrong and provocative. Israel surrenders the moral high ground when they persist with them. The settlements are not the cause of the conflict, but they aggravate it and make peace much harder.
The settlement policy is divisive even in Israel. Most acts of the Israeli state have widespread support (such as military action against Hamas) but the settlements are a policy most associated with the Likud party. They do have majority support, but also significant opposition. So opposing the settlements is not opposing the state of Israel – just the policy of the current Government.
There have been some polls inside Israel on them. They have found:
But you can be anti-settlements (as I am) but also regard the UN resolution as somewhat unfair to Israel in that the language around the occupied territories implicitly includes some of the holiest sites in Judaism in them. This open letter from UN Watch is a good example of the criticisms against the resolution.
For those interested my views on what should happen (but never will) are:
A great quote from retiring economist Thomas Sowell:
In material things, there has been almost unbelievable progress. Most Americans did not have refrigerators back in 1930, when I was born. Television was little more than an experiment, and such things as air-conditioning or air travel were only for the very rich.
My own family did not have electricity or hot running water, in my early childhood, which was not unusual for blacks in the South in those days.
It is hard to convey to today’s generation the fear that the paralyzing disease of polio inspired, until vaccines put an abrupt end to its long reign of terror in the 1950s.
Most people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia continue to call the “have-nots” today have things that the “haves” did not have, just a generation ago.”
We have much to be grateful for. That so much progress could be witnessed by ONE man is often lost on today’s pampered populace. To the nay-sayers and anti-capitalists alike, to the former Sanders supporters and socialists-lite, I say the following: You may not believe this one economist’s free market stances, you may not believe his calculations or projections, but what you cannot take away is that which he observed first hand. In ONE lifetime, he witnessed our “poor” going from huts without electricity to homes with electricity, tv, cable, internet, air conditioning, video games, microwaves, and refrigeration. Can you really feel that things – today – are as bad as you think they are, given how far we’ve come? Perhaps you feel the way you do because you lack perspective on what TRUE poverty is and how far our society has come.
Emily Roden writes about her experiences with Rex Tillerson:
The trial concluded, and it was time for the jury to deliberate. The story was heartbreaking, and the facts of the case were clear enough to make the majority of the jury convinced of the guilt of this sexual offender of a little girl. But the defense did a good enough job to create a couple of hold-outs. As our deliberations came to a close, it appeared we might have a hung jury.
That’s when Tillerson began to speak. Humbly, delicately and without an ounce of condescension toward those who disagreed, he began walking us all through the details of the case. I even recall being moved by his thorough explanation about the nature of doubt and the standards set forth by our justice system.
With great patience, this man who strikes multibillion-dollar deals with foreign heads of state brought our scrappy jury together — to bring a sexual predator to justice and to deliver justice for a scared and deeply wounded little girl.
A local nonprofit was instrumental in fostering that young girl through this process, providing her counseling and legal help. I was so struck by their mission that I toured their facility the week after the case to learn how I could donate and volunteer to their cause.
On a whim, I decided to reach out to Tillerson to encourage him to do the same. I found an email for him online and sent him a note, touting the role this agency played in our trial and urging him to consider supporting the great work they do. To my surprise, I received an email back thanking me for my note and my jury service, and ensuring me that he would contact the agency. I later received a call from the director of that nonprofit to let me know that Tillerson followed through and gave a generous donation.
I didn’t vote for Trump. This is not an endorsement of Tillerson for secretary of state. I’m sure that the coming days and weeks will be filled with speculation and political discussion over this clearly controversial pick. I certainly appreciate those concerns and the process that ensures significant scrutiny for this important position.
But during a recent news show, I heard the term “corrupt” applied to this man who I spent five days with back in 2007.
All I know is that this man who holds one of the most powerful positions in the world and clearly has the means and ability to side-step his jury responsibilities, served as a normal citizen without complaint or pretense.
I know that a scared little girl who was finally persuaded to come public with her account of abuse was inches away from a decision that would have sided with her abuser, yet this man put his negotiation skills to a noble use, and justice was served.
Rare for a multinational CEO to not skip jury service.
I know that this man and his myriad aides could have ignored an unsolicited email from a girl in her 20s suggesting that he donate to a local cause, but he took the time to respond and opened up his pocket book.
My five days with Rex Tillerson is all I know about this man and his character. And in light of the recent news, I thought this a relevant story to tell.
It does speak to character.