Nothing to see ... no principles, no ideas ... (updated)

John Key's National Party announced the first wave of their strategy for Election Year 2008 yesterday: they're going to outflank Labour on the left. In 2005 Don Brash's National party called interest-free student loans "an irresponsible election bribe."  Yesterday Key's Labour-Lite endorsed the irresponsible election bribe, and added a further ten percent.  Story here.

                            

2008: the year of the 'me-too' election.

UPDATE 1:  It's said that the interest-free student loans policy would be "too difficult to unpick."  Not at all.  As a few commenters here have suggested -- and as has been Libertarianz policy for some time -- all that's necessary is to sell the loan agreements off to whoever wants them, at whatever mark down bidders think is workable.  Let them "unpick" what should never have been knitted in the first place.

UPDATE 2: Speaking of centrist mush ... on the back of John Boy's nine questions to Helen the other day, SOLO's Lance Davey has ten right back at him.  Just to remind you, John Boy's original nine questions were:

1. Why, after eight years of Labour, are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?
2. Why, under Labour, is the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world, getting bigger and bigger?
3. Why, under Labour, do we get a tax cut only in election year, when we really needed it years ago?
4. Why are grocery and petrol prices going through the roof?
5. Why can't our hardworking kids afford to buy their own house?
6. Why is one in five Kiwi kids leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills?
7. Why, when Labour claim they aspire to be carbon-neutral, do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate?
8. Why hasn't the health system improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it?
9. Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar and why is Labour unable to do anything about it?

Good questions all, but as I pointed out the other day, John Boy has no more answers than Helen does -- so as Lance says, given National's well earned reputation as Labour-Lite let's ask:

1. Why, after eight years of Labour, have we heard National whine about high interest rates - but never once offer a plausible alternative solution?  Not once.
2. How exactly would the gap between our wages, and wages in Australia and other parts of the world stop getting bigger and bigger under your stewardship, if all you are offering is Labour-Lite?
3. How will tax cuts be either affordable or practical under your regime, given how scared you are of the dreaded "P" word (privatisation), your unwillingness to countenance serious steps to roll back the welfare state, and no meaningful plans whatsoever to cut government spending beyond "attacking waste" -- which every opposition party since time began promises, but none ever elected ever achieves?
4. Do you recognise that with grocery and petrol prices already going through the roof, your stated goal to "reduce carbon emissions" to an even greater extent than Labour will send the price of groceries and petrol even further skyward?
5. Are you aware that in several recent reports the blame for high housing costs was laid squarely at the feet of over-regulation? Do you remember who it was that introduced the worst of these regulatory laws, the Resource Management Act?  Since you weren't in the country then, let me remind you: it was National. Or who administered it without change for nine years and two elections? Let me remind you again: it was National -- and, for five of those years, National's present environment spokesthing Nick Smith.  "Far reaching environmental legislation" Smith calls the RMA.
6. Do you realise that one in five Kiwi kids who left school under the last National Government left with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills as well?  Do you know that nothing tangible has changed on that score since your own sorry stewardship?  And why, under your own proposed regime, will four in five New Zealand children still be forced to endure indoctrination by the state at the factory schools responsible for NZers' grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills? And why are the so called 'educationalists' responsible for that tragedy not already on your hit list?
7. Why does National buy into the nonsense of man-made Global Warming anyway?
8. If the health system hasn't improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it, will National dare do the right thing and work to privatise health? Or will it keep flogging the same die-while-you-wait horse?
9. What would your government do, John, to fight the causes of violent crime?  With most of those responsible for violent crime having been scarred with illiteracy caused by the state's factory schools, what do you propose to do about that?  With the modern rise in violent crime having been largely congruent with the time that the unwanted children of DPB recipients came to adolescence, what do you propose to do about that? What do you propose to do about the police spending more time doing over innocent people for driving fast -- or smacking their kids -- or defending themselves against violence -- than they in addressing real crime?  For arresting and incarcerating more and more  New Zealanders guilty only of victim-less crimes, when so many real criminals and real crimes with real victims are left un-addressed?  What will you do about all the anti-individualist and quasi-socialist statist busybodies that infest your own party (people like Jaqui Dean, the daft bint crusading against any "think of the children" cause thrust under her ignorant, self-serving nose) and about all the soaring state interference at the personal level of what you can, can't, must and should not consume, do or think?  What will you do to end the nannying?
10. In short, what exactly will you do to work towards your party's purported goal of minimising the government and keeping them out of our lives?

Any further questions?  Any chance, do you think, of any plausible answers -- any at all -- either now or in the months to come?

Student loans won't cost very much. Yeah, right.

When  the student loan election bribe was uncorked last election, it was predicted by everyone from bankers to political opponents to Cactus Kate that it was going to cost a lot -- up to $1billion said Westpac's Brendan O'Donovan, three times what Labour's electioneers were saying -- and "would ... cause an explosion in student debt."

No, no, no said finger-wagging Labour spin doctors and Green cheerleaders at the time, carefully keeping their their eyes on the polls, their fingers crossed and their calculations to themselves.  "Extremist and scaremongering" said a cynically vote-mongering Mallard about O'Donovan's now proven predictions.

Three years later, guess who was right?  "Research released today by TNS Conversa revealed average student debt had risen by 54 per cent since 2004" -- and let's face it, there can't be one person with a working brain who's truly surprised -- and NZUSA president Paul Falloon (who apparently wasn't awake three years ago) blames banks for "seizing the chance to entice students as customers."

Apparently Mr Falloon is in need of that working brain.  It isn't banks who are "seizing the chance" to entice students as customers -- it was the Clark Government's election bribe which sought to entice short-sighted students as voters (and don't forget that Labour-Lite now endorse the bribe).

Labour liars weren't wrong when they said their no-interest loan bribe wouldn't cause an explosion in student debt: they just didn't care two hoots that it would.  What interested them far more, and interests them still, is getting their bums back on the Treasury benches -- and short-sighted students were ideally placed to lap up their bribe and repay it later in the country's polling booths. 

The attention span of student presidents may be shorter than the average spin cycle; there's no need for anyone else's to be.

Liars at large

This election year, individuals have been severely restricted in the amounts they can spend opposing government policies -- meanwhile, the Clark Government has spent record amounts of your money fitting out government departments with spin doctors to trumpet its own lies.  [Story here.]While individuals are confined to spending $120,000 over the whole year in a national campaign (or just $10,000 in a local campaign), government departments now boast a whopping 448 spin doctors -- 210 more than just five years ago, and nearly ten times the number of the mid-eighties -- who cost us the sum of $47 million, not including the cost of campaigns these lying arseholes dream up. 

This is where your tax dollars go to, while the sound of protest is muzzled.

Remember last year when a huge taxpayer-funded advertising splurge trumpeted the government's  Kiwisaver, Student Loans and Welfare for Working Families election bribes? You and I paid for that.  Remember all the lies and spin fed to you by the Clark Government-- lies and spin about smacking your children, about the Electoral Finance Bill, about their pledge card ... You and I paid for all that too, and they plan for you to keep right on paying, election after election, while being muzzled in how much we can pay to protest.

The explosion of spin under the Clark regime and of the liars who are paid to do it mirrors a similar explosion in lying and spin in Tony Blair's New Labour.  The pledge card wasn't the only thing NZ Labour borrowed from UK New Labour.  They've also borrowed their mendacity.  As Peter Oborne notes in writing of the rise and rise of political lying in Britain, the reliance on spin and the volume of its is a new phenomenon in politics.

All governments have contained liars, and most politicians deceive each other as well as the public from time to time.  But in recent years [under New Labour] mendacity and deception have ceased to be abnormal and become an entrenched feature of the British [political] system.

The institutionalisation of spin is almost complete, here as it is in Britain.

Records Ruth Laugesen in yesterday's Sunday Star Times, the number of spin doctors is at a record high.  "Government agencies have hired more new communications staff in five years than all the journalists working at Television New Zealand, Radio New Zealand, the Sunday Star-Times and the Dominion Post newspapers put together."  As Gerry Brownlee points out, this leaves them ideally placed to use the machinery of government as its personal campaign for re-election.

In the last election the Clark Government thought they could use taxpayer's money intended to run the Prime Minister's office in order to run for the Prime Minister's Office.  This was what paid for their pledge card.  This election they clearly intend to use every "communications" resource  in every government department they can lay their hands on to run for re-election.  This is the reason the Madeleine Setchell/Clair Curran employment saga was so important (the only reason): it's important to the Clark Government that the have loyal "communications staff" are in place in every department.  With the numbers Laugesen quotes, it's clear that the capture of the public service is all but complete.

• "The Ministry of Social Development topped the list with 54 communications staff and contractors, making it bigger than Radio New Zealand's entire workforce of journalists."
• "The biggest spender on communication contractors and staff was the Ministry of Education, with 70% of the $6.6m it spent going on contractors."
• "There are 10 times as many government "communications staff" as there were 25 years ago, despite a smaller public service."

Not included in this number is the cost of bloggers such as the hacks at the Sub-Standard, who spin this news by arguing that it's not that there are too many spin doctors but too few journalists -- echoing a line used by Helen Clark at a journalism conference last December, and doing it on Labour's ticket.  (As Paul M. points out in the comments at Kiwiblog, the Sub-Standard is hosted on the Labour Party's server, but without the parliamentary crest that's supposed to appear on taxpayer-funded pieces of puffery such as this is, leaving a few questions for the Sub-Standard boys and girls to answer, including who exactly pays their wages, and for what purpose.)

Watch out people.  There are liars out there, and you're paying for them.

The Rise of Political Lying by Peter Oborne Read more about this book...

Would you believe them?

On the one hand, New National has "rolled over on income-related rentals, the first wave of Working for Families, and looks likely to bow to interest-free student loans and KiwiSaver, which is estimated to cost $1 billion-a-year." But after Bill English previously said no to tax cuts from the New Nats, John Boy now says they can offer them, but they'll be "kept under wraps till the election."

Is this a serious offer? Or another flip flop in a long line of past and future flip flops, one calculated only to drown out the confusion caused by John Boy's deputy?

NZQA: Perfectly suited to the Age of Crap

The Seventeenth Century was the Age of Reason. The Nineteenth Century was the Age of Capitalism. The Twenty-First Century will more than likely be the Age of Crap.

Sandi at SOLO outlines some of the means whereby the New Zealand Qualification's Authority is helping to usher in such an age, specifically "what type of courses are within the NZQA Framework [and for which] the government provides student loans."

Here's some highlights:

Developing Christian Spirituality
8515 3 Discuss a theology of hardship, suffering and blessing in Christian faith and life
Christian Worship & Preaching
11034 4 Choreograph, plan, and use dance as a medium of expression in Christian worship
Natural & Traditional Health & Healing
14822 25 Use an advanced range of essential oils and carrier oils for aromatherapy in the clinical setting
Hellerwork
Hellerwork is a series of one-hour sessions of deep tissue bodywork and movement education designed to realign the body and release chronic tension and stress. Verbal dialogue is used to assist the client in becoming aware of emotional stress that may be related to physical tension.
14819 40 Apply Hellerwork dialogue techniques to meet individual client needs
Homeobotanical Therapy
Homoeobotanical remedies are powerful, synergistic blends of organic herbs in liquid form. They are potentised homeopathically and specifically chosen to target the Organs and Systems on the body.
14831 5 Use homeobotanical repertory and materia medica in clinical practice
Hypnotherapy
14771 6 Conduct hypnotic regression for hypnotherapeutic practice
Reflexology

Read on here for the full list of crap.

As Sandi points out, the real tragedy is not so much the taxpayers' money wasted on these 'courses' but the intelligent young minds being thrown away in pursuit of such nonsense, while courses that do explicitly promote rationality have trouble fitting into the NZQA framework.

"Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing," noted Ayn Rand, "but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise." By that standard, graduates of course such as these are having their wings clipped before they've even learned to fly.

LINKS: NZQA - Sandi at SOLO
Montessori teacher training in NZ - Maria Montessori Education Foundation (NZ)

RELATED: Education, Politics-NZ

Green-Labour Manifesto

Two posters for your bedroom wall. Click on each picture to see a larger picture.

Click here to download a PDF Poster of the illustration from the Greens Transport and Policing Policy, and here for a PDF Poster of the cover page from Michael Cullen's notes on Labour's Student Loans Policy .

Enjoy.

Roll out the pork barrel!

Simon Collins at the Herald has tried to sum up the cost of Labour's promises so far. He's understated the budgeted costs, and also I think well understated some fairly savage social effects of Labour's new 'Welfare for Families 2.0' package -- its plan to make beneficiaries of up to three-quarters of the country's families.

The Labour Party has promised to spend an extra $911 million a year on its election pledges so far...

Yesterday's $438 million a year in extra family support by 2008-09 comes on top of $300 million a year to write off interest on student loans, $81 million for extra cataract, knee and hip operations, $50 million for a rates rebate for low-income home-owners, $25 million for extra community police and $17 million for 5000 new modern apprentices.

Labour is awash with cash, and Simon hasn't even begun to tot up all the spending promises. The student loans bribe has been costed at over a billion dollars by Westpac economist Brendan Donovan -- that on its own outdoes Simon Collins's total figure.

And what of the promise to spend $500 million that was 'found' to be lying around to build more roads (despite Fletcher's CEO pointing out that road-building capacity is at its limit). And what of the Kyoto balls-up, looking like a $1 billion bungle.

These figures are all looking mighty big -- much bigger than Simon's paltry $911 million a year. A rough calculation puts the spend-up so far at about $3.2 billion. This is bribery on a Muldoonist scale, and promised at a time when the 'fiscally prudent' Doctor Cullen has been warning there is "no extra cash to spend," "no money to splurge," "no fat to trim." None at all. Not a bit.

What he didn't mention was the enormous barrel of pork out the back he was planning to roll out and uncork.

And one further cost those figures above don't measure: the 'Welfare for Families 2.0' package announced yesterday will cement in place the existing social structure of the country for a long time to come. If your family is receiving Welfare for Families largesse, and you earn an extra dollar, that dollar will be taxed at up to 95.2%. Who will want to earn that extra dollar? Who could?

As Rodney Hide pointed out, even under Labour's 'Welfare for Families 1.0' package families "can’t improve their lot. Michael Cullen and Steve Maharey have frozen their income... It doesn’t matter how hard you work – you can’t improve your lot. It’s doesn’t matter either if you slack off -- your income stays much the same." As I pointed out of the earlier release of 'Welfare for Families 1.0', this is creating a class system, something to which Labour purports to be opposed. Yesterday's announcement if implemented would calcify New Zealand's class structure forever, the only way up for a New Zealand family will be to uncork another baby.

So who exactly is targeting dumb people then? Labour Party President Mike Williams said of National's TV ads that there just aren't enough dumb people around to be attracted by them. So who the hell is he expecting to be attracted by this outpouring of pork.

This won't be the last time this election that election bribes are rolled out, nor will it be the last time you have me reminding you of H.L. Mencken's comment that "an election is an advance auction of stolen goods." Just don't forget whose money it is with which you, your family, or your children are being bribed, and whose future you will be selling out.