Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Sacha,
I have plenty of willpower - it's my won'tpower that's lacking.
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Then I suggest you vote Labour, or Green and by doing so, oppose them.
Not necessarily. The main effect, if not the intent – which it might be anyway – is that MMP requires governments be coalitions because parliament its given primacy over any single party.
That was a deliberate ploy. National never had any intention to mine in National Parks
Honestly, I don’t think that anyone ever ascribed that much intellectual sophistication to Gerry Creosote, I mean Brownlee.
(Sorry, a fat joke. Sorry, really really sorry about that... but can't resist. I'm bad, very bad.)
advocating revolution
I don’t think that the marches against mining national parks went so far as revolution, but they were nonetheless sincere and effective.
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Voting is the only way to achieve political change, unless you are advocating revolution and I, for une, will be sticking to good ol’ democracy and be ignoring the management speak gobbledygook of proselytising political pundits permanently polluting perceptions of people power.
Voting for the properly presented approved political parties is not the only way, and you’re using the argument of the excluded middle – “either X extreme or Y extreme” when in fact there are many options in between and even off the linear spectrum between those extremes. To suggest that someone who expresses disillusionment with an established party is a bomb-throwing, black-cloaked anarchist (Hell, let’s throw in domino-mask, black hat and moustache-twirling as well) is just silly hyperbole.
Oh, and a note: alliteration is not wit, even if its premier proponent, Winston Peters proposes so, since he’s particularly, persistently, even perennially prone to public pronouncements that present it in his practice of… shit, what’s a synonym of “rhetoric” that starts with “p”?
On a more conciliatory note, I think we agree on basic Political Principle more than you think. The difference lies, I think, on whether a Particular Political Party rePresented in Parliament Presents the only Proper Partisan… oh fuck it: PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.
So there.
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Ravi Batra’s pretty Pollyanna-ish about the actual change itself. Maybe he’s thinking of Czechoslovakia, but I’m thinking more of Weimar Germany too. It’s not as bad as things could be here, but in the US, plutocracy in the costume of populism is entrenched – one has to have access to about a billion to think of running for congress, let alone the presidency. Whatever the ethics and practices of individual candidates, their political careers are now almost totally consumed by the pursuit of campaign funds and therefore the contributions of large corporations, and as a result, keeping them happy and generous.
It’s led to an ineffective government, unwilling to tackle real structural problems, but parties making shrill noises about ‘socialism’.
As a case in point, which I think is symptomatic, one can look at the plight of the american space programme. Programmes to replace the space shuttle came and went with depressing regularity: something would be proposed, costs would balloon, then it would be cancelled, but to keep the contractors happy, something new would be proposed, started… costs would balloon and it would be cancelled. Rinse and repeat. In terms of getting people into space reliably, these programmes were failures, but as providers of pork, they were eminently successful, and to the various Representatives, Senators and Governors who wanted federal money flowing into their state, that is all they had to be.
Just recently the “Space Launch System”, has been unveiled and nicknamed the “Senate Launch System” because its actual design has been dictated by senators for Alabama and Utah, where major contractors associated with the old shuttle programme were based. It’s supposed to keep the money flowing to the contractors, but its costs will cannibalise real space science work, it's an overscaled monster, it will fly, if at all, only in several years from now, fly only once every two or three years anyway and nobody has articulated a mission for it.
But it keeps pork flowing into Alabama and Utah.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s company Spacex has demonstrated (according to Nasa’s own reports) an ability to develop a launch system for about a third the cost of Nasa in conjunction with the usual contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing and ATK)… and of course congress and even the USAF (who is a major purchaser of launch services) are trying to freeze Musk out with funding cuts to independent launch providers and block purchases at inflated costs from Boeing et al.
OK, a pointy-headed, long-winded technical and rather narrow example, but I think it illustrates the dysfunction of crony capitalism and the unwillingness of democratic institutions in their present form to deal with it.
People know something’s wrong, and they’re angry, the existing political system can’t or won’t fix things and we see as a result movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. It’s an environment in which a very dangerous demagogue could rise.
(Musk, by the way, founded Paypal now has interests in solar power and is the founder of the electric car company, Tesla, which seems to be likely to be successful.)
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
The Mana party’s situation is… interesting. I’m not sure or not whether I should be surprised that they’ve scored so lowly in the polls so far. On one hand, there are a lot of disaffected people out there (hello me) looking for receptacles for their votes, but on the other hand, it does take time for a party to establish itself, so maybe, if they survive, they might become a force in the next election.
I’m not going to make predictions or judgments from now on, just observe, or make comments I know to be of little value. There’s certainly a lot to be learned, just when we thought that this was going to be a boring election – not because of what happens in November, but because of what emerges and hints at longer-term changes in the landscape.
I’m kinda intrigued by this:
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20111105-0810-ravi_batra_predictions_and_politics-048.mp3
Professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and the author of the 2008 book, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos. (48′06″)
Not so confident that the timetable will be followed, and not so sure that the “Passionless People”/“Fretful Sleepers” are likely to be so active, but the forces indicated might upset a few predictions.
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We all know Goff’s Labour has serious issues with itself, and I think at the very least it needs to man up, and do a Michelle Boag on those who don’t know when to quit.
Agree totally. If only it had been done in 2008-9. Fingers crossed for early 2012 and maybe I'll vote for them in 2014, whoever the new leader might be. I'm thinking of Dr Evil, a lever, a trapdoor, a flaming pit and Mallard the first to drop.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
Well, I’m afraid that I see the Alliance as an historical footnote at best.
Yes, objectively speaking, a Tory government is, by whatever quantum one chooses, worse than a Labour-led government. However, is a single-term Labour-led government is only marginally better than one more term of a Key-led* National-led government? In any case should a Labour-led government be the permanent ideal? Maybe the time has passed and the Labour Party as an institution is no longer fit? Maybe someone else deserves a chance to carry the torch of liberalism? The environment matters, since the economy, as it has been said, is a wholely-owned subsidiary of the ecology and maybe, once the Greens overcome their Luddism (fingers crossed into non-Euclidean geometries), they might be the inheritors in the long run?
*Key’s one virtue – inadvertent as it is – is his populism. He won’t do something that makes him visibly unpopular and will back down under pressure. I’m afraid that asset sales will go ahead, but I’m not assured that a Goff-led Labour party with no guiding principles wouldn’t decide that they were necessary in its one term of government, considering his own flip-flops over the last few years.
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O give us a fondle of that jailbait political muscle tone!
OK, a clever little sneer. I can’t say much in response for legal reasons.
I’ve been involved in a matter that has had serious personal financial legal and career repercussions. I am not at liberty to speak of it. I use a pseudonym partly because of it. In the end I came out on top, but I know what it means to put something on the line for the sake of principle and suffer years afterwards as a result.
So yeah, I think I know a little of what I speak about.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Joe Wylie,
Glad to hear it. Try not to give the impression that that is how you do feel.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Joe Wylie,
Should your world be similarly rocked, I can only wish that your idealism translates into engagement rather quicker than inevitably.
What’s that? Anticipatory schadenfreude?
Because you’ll bloody need it, along with all the political help you can muster.
Actually, I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Are you hoping that it does? If so, that seems petty of you.
In any case, if it happens, it won’t be a matter of choice.
And I’ve known fairweather friends and I’ve found that fairweather friends aren’t friends.
those in the party who are prepared to put themselves on the line.
I agree, more than you think - but again, I ask, how much influence do these principled individuals have on party policy... and party voting?