Other than being led by Dirty Politics scum like Jordan Williams and David Farrar, The Taxpayers’ Union is an astro turf right wing attack vehicle designed to push the free market small Government ideology on behalf of NZs most vicious and rich right wingers.
The Taxpayers’ Union are the ideological shock troops of the neoliberal revolution and they are forever attacking State regulations in favour of the free market, so imagine our collective glee on the Left to see the great champions of free market capitalism crawling on their belly for a Government wage subsidy…
The Taxpayers’ Union, a group which highlights what it sees as wasteful Government spending and argues for lower taxes, has been granted more than $60,000 in taxpayer money as part of the COVID-19 wage subsidy.
The money will be used to support nine of the incorporated society’s employees, according to an entry on the Government’s public database of wage subsidy recipients.
“This decision was made on the basis of our ethical obligations to staff during the Government-mandated economic shutdown,” a post on the group’s website said.
“The decision to accept this subsidy was not as simple for us as for most organisations. Prior to COVID-19, we have stated on the record that we would never accept taxpayer funding. That commitment was, of course, made in a time few New Zealanders could possibly have anticipated COVID-19 and the ensuing economic situation.
“After brief deliberation, the Taxpayers’ Union board determined the welfare of our employees to be a more pressing immediate concern than ideological purity.”
…well, well, well. These ideological free market fascists who previously stated they would NEVER take taxpayer funding now have.
How hilarious that the second capitalism fails, those who exploit it most and rage against State intervention are the first in the queue for a handout.
They aren’t just intellectually vile with weaponised selfishness, they are fucking hypocrites as well.
NEVER let them forget this when they start attacking taxpayer funded programmes again.
Presumably the Taxavoiders Union has to prove their loss of income, this is a chance to see where their money comes from and dispel their claim to be grassroots.
Keith Simes -Is it taxavoiders union or taxevaders union? Probably the latter.
A friend who had a thriving business employing many and helps educational facilities got $56,000 to keep their staff going and these parasites who create no business at all get $60,000.
Lest we forget.
Given those involved in this farce of an organisation and their direct involvement with Dirty Politics, from John Keys PM office no less, I always thought it was an alter ego lobbying division of the National Party anyway.
And surely National who is THE most financially bloated Party bar none should foot the bill for their own self created supporters group?
Its free no questions asked just hand it willy nilly money. Anyone who didn’t dive on in is a fool. The Govt is litteraly throwing it out by the armoured truck load. Get into it but hurry as soon they will realise the implications.
“Its free no questions asked just hand it willy nilly money.”
But is it really Peter?
https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/other-types-of-leave/coronavirus-workplace/wage-subsidy/
“NO QUESTIONS ASKED”
Well, well Peter more right wing dogma!
Agree, this government has to go back to managing the economy rather than trying to be the economy. Admit that these businesses may never be solvent again, place people on the dole and get on with rebuilding. This could be the difference between saving the country’s economy and letting some businesses go or saving every small business and the country going bankrupt.
No mention of lives saved?
Who cares about lives when there’s $$$ at stake?
True simonm !
In the situation in which we find ourselves at the present time, makes me realise how our values have changed over the past 35+ years. And not for the better either!
Yes Mary, the torrent of abuse a nurse received disgusts me….
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12324219
I reminded my wife of the 60’s and 70’s when people were caring and sharing types. Oh how times have changed.
Money is at the forefront of everything, and lives are a disposable commodity.
Popeye, If a sovereign nation creates its own currency, how can it go bankrupt?
Well I like the idea of setting up a system that increases the amount of equity in the economy (which in this context means increasing the amount the average national household can earn) because one element that is exploited by lefties is they say “workers are being exploited by the bosses” but when you look at it its not true and it’s equally not true that the bosses are exploited by the worker.
The bosses and the workers together exploit the free energy that is out there in the universe. If we didn’t have energy in the first place then this conversation wouldn’t be possible and neither would life. So it’s energy that we are exploiting on that bases.
I don’t mean we are going to go bankrupt if our currency isn’t backed by some kind of finite resource because we actually didn’t build the sun it just happened to be there. Coal was just laying there we are just exporting those free services.
Under this perspective the whole capitalist perspective goes out the window. Now we can see what’s going to happen with the kiwi dollar over time and I am one of those people who thinks we are going to have no need for a massive labour force because of the capacity of the workforce to get an income will no longer be possible so we need to campaign on other fronts to get a UBI/Jobs guarantee as well as a debt repayment scheme because they both go together, so any who receives a UBI, a portion of the UBI will have to go to repaying any debts the recipient has.
So it’s this type of currency campaigning I would encourage people to get into and it takes more intelligence than being straight out reactive. Iv seen so much reactive campaigning by lefties and if you’re going to react the right will win because they’re more reactive.
So you lot are not cleverer than the right although some of us are, most are not. By seeing debt as having more than one level of analysis rather than focusing on unionisation or wage campaigns, THEN lefties are going to have a chance to win or the future we face will be that of the hunger games and not of a democratic society.
So now I’m going to make this a 2 part conversation. We’ve seen the claim from a lot of lefties including myself that The Wuhan Virus is going to end free market capitalism. So I’m going to start by saying that claim is way to strong and end with how lefties can make a reasonable claim for a Global Great Depression. And I think it’s safe to say my main motivation here is that when I think I’m seeing lefties spreading misinformation I think that damages our credibility. I would rather have people believe in the truth generally especially when it comes to things like what lefties are actually saying because we should all want accurate information to be spread and we want people to know that there are people out there that are going to bullshit and then people go well the data/evidence doesn’t say this or that which isn’t the best talking point.
So the main claim is that covid19 came from China which is to strong of a claim and we don’t need to make that claim. So we could go over the literature and find out that it might not have come from China. So then how can we say the economy is going to collapse when we don’t really know where the virus came from?
The main evidence for the outbreak is it came from a seafood market in Wuhan. So early on there was about 41 cases and 2/3rds of those cases had contact with the seafood market. The inference is the most likely the disease came from one of the animals they were selling specifically bats. Of all the candidate animals it’s most likely a bat, the reason for that is bats have the highest amounts of genomology with the types of corona viruses that effect bats. There is a counterpoint that it could be pangolin as an intermediate host (most notably pushed by people who claim it was a U.S bio weapon) how ever I’m not convinced by that because there’s higher genomology with bat viruses in humans rather than pangolin viruses in humans
The second thing is the receptor binding proteins is reported to be high in pangolins. I haven’t seen anything comparing bat corona viruses to pangolin corona viruses. And I’m also not convinced of the inference that the receptor binding protein is more important than the genomology itself. We can get into all this if anyone wants but the TL;DR version is the top suspect is bats sold at a seafood market in Wuhan, not a snake, not a pangolin as an intermediary, all though they are possible, we just don’t know.
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930183-5
Now going back to the issue about currency, the issue is.., well because we don’t know what the carrier was so we really need to go back and look at the duration of the virus from when it started with those patients that had contact with the market or not because the first case didn’t have contact with the market and it supports the idea that corona virus was brought to the market rather than came from the market.
So if you look at figure 1 on page 39 in the link you’ll see “time” on the X axis and on the Y axis is the number of cases and then the cases are divided into two colours grey and blue where blue represents people who have not had contact with the fish market and grey is people who had contact with the market. The takeaway of this graph is that the majority of people who first contracted covid19 had contact with a seafood market in Wuhan but the earliest case you’ll see is just a blue bar who had NOT had contact (that’s not to say that was patient zero but that’s the earliest case we are aware of) and there’s a good ten day gap between those that didn’t have contact with the market and then the seafood market infecting others. I’m not saying the incubation period is longer than officially stated but certainly the virus can last longer than 10 days which is above the mean incubation period which is about 5days.
So that’s just one problem floating around and don’t forget scientists are supposed to synthesis a vaccine from this incomplete data set which isn’t impossible it just makes it really really, REALLY difficult because the temporal data supports the claim that the virus came from the market rather than someone bringing the virus to the market.
Second is you can claim the virus came from somewhere else but then you can say well it broke out in Wuhan first and not anywhere else. And again these are major counterpoints to money market arguments because of the evidence and data that would influence the money markets universe in the real world rather than just you and me just bullshiting trying to be corona experts.
Over all if we look at money market interactions with the evidence then what else would it mean if China went straight back to an unregulated bush meat industry. Certainly there would be a lot more interaction with the FIRE economy because we are not just going to get these bats biting random people and oops a Great Depression.
The reason a Global Great Depression is not absurd and IS possible is NOT because of bats its because of unregulated industries manned by spelunker’s (in my view a spelunker is an idiot who likes to go fuck themselves in caves). The thing about bats is they poo everywhere and that poo carries a lot of disease so you don’t have to come into direct contact with bats or the seafood market in order to spread the corona virus and they’re mega migrating animals so transmission was going to happen and we know the virus can hang around for days on different surfaces. Yknow and we the tour guides taking people through caves or what ever.
So there are examples where lefties have spread misinformation and there are reasons based on evidence that would move money markets and I haven’t seen an analysis (of bat entomology multiplied by the rate of transmission) or an estimated rate of transmission based from that form of interaction, compared to the (rate of spelunking multiplied by the estimated rate of transmission) from going into a cave full of bats. So if some one has that data I’d be happy to look at it, i’m not sure which one would pan out and even if it does Yknow spelunking moving forward will be far less popular than a seafood market so both rates of transmission will have differing effects on money markets.
So let me be a little clearer the problem isn’t the rate of the induction, the problem is the STRENGTH of the rate of induction, clearly.
So I guess the next thing to say is if anyone wants to come at me about the science involved with The Wuhan Virus your more welcome no, I encourage anyone to come at me about actual reasonable claims about what lefties can make. Yknow we don’t want to say crazy stuff just for the sack of promoting left wing politics. I shouldn’t be this cynical because I’m sure a lot of people just believe the MainStreamMedia Truth tellers and Truth seekers that have been influencing left wing activists to say outlandish stuff because they don’t know better. And I’m partly motivated by Weka over at the standard going balls deep into the Internet to conjure up reasons to ban Morrisey from the standard (but, yeah).
SO! The claim that can be made is that continued industrial policy, especially the way we’ve been doing it, increases the rate humanity experiences pandemics. So we don’t have to attribute corona virus specifically to inducing a Global Great Depression and I know there are people who don’t like it when I track things that are this basic, I’m just being sceptical about the strength of inferences and arguments disseminated by lefties. So another point is that I’m not saying that a depression is false in this case.
The major point is if you’re going to say corona virus will cause a depressions while lefties say it came from bats, Wuhan, U.S army, 5G, rape apology (Weka) or where ever nonsense then I’m sorry, you’re going to need a lot more data.
Good to see these scum suckers finally referred to for what they are (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120957323/coronavirus-what-is-fortress-new-zealand-going-to-look-like): “Even the RIGHT-WING LOBBY GROUP the Taxpayers Union has taken $60,000 in government cash, breaking an oath it had made to never accept government help. Crises make socialists of everyone.”
And how many Nazional Party-supporting beneficiary-bashing talkback radio heroes are now getting a benefit I wonder? From that same article “More than a million workers – 41 per cent of our entire workforce – are now being supported by the Government’s wage subsidy”.
Some people in this country are being forced to reassess their values.
They cannot ignore the fact that the economic system they’ve been lied to about is simply incapable of handling any crisis (look as recently as 2009 for example, a crisis it actually created!).
The free market approach to all this would have been no intervention whatsoever. Let the virus spread. Let people die. Let people lose their jobs. Let people fend for themselves. Let crime escalate as desperate folk try to feed themselves and their families. And so on…….
Capitalism failed to prepare us for this. It fails to sustain us through this. And it sure as hell won’t help us get out of this and forge a society any fairer or better equipped than what we had pre-Covid.
George Carlin put it so well: “We know what they want -more for themselves and less for everyone else.”
By the way, the environmental meltdown continues as a consequence of past overuse of fossil fuels, and at this stage the recent great decline in global economic activity isn’t showing up, e.g.
Daily CO2
Apr. 9, 2020: 417.85 ppm
Apr. 9, 2019: 412.53 ppm
Though I did read that Indians can see the Himalayas for the first time in 30 years.
Let’s hope we do not return to the kind of business as usual that right wing arseholes promote.
Oh, I shan’t be forgetting this, any time soon, Martyn. I have a long memory when it comes to this sort of thing.
Please do an in depth write up, Frank.
Yes as this pandemic hits the pockets of the rich maggots they will grab any handout they can and hide the event from public grze like John key did frequently since he made $40 million as he was an ‘agent selliing our public rail company back in the early 1990’s.
Will the so-called Taxpayers Union do what other businesses could do next year and claim a tax refund on the money they will be receiving from the NZ Government(aka the NZ taxpayers)? That is they will make a tax claim on the money given by the government and expect to make more money out of it at the end of the 2020 financial year?
Will the ‘refund’ go into the Taxpayers Union bank account or into some other bank account linked to say the NZ National Party?
There will be a number of not so credible organisations that will take advantage of this offer from the government and perhaps not pass it onto their workers but pocket it for themselves and then they will turn around and blame the government for failing NZ workers. Those companies will then cease to exist i.e go under.
More than 25 years ago whilst working for DSW an employer was deducting money from an employee in a private company. And instead of passing the money back to DSW he pocketed it all.
And so it could be likely in a greedy society that the money from the government will not be passed onto those who will be needing it by greedy employers. Lets hope it doesn’t happen but an instant amount of money into a bank account can bring out the Green-eyed Monster in some people. We have already seen it amongst former National MPs etc and so it could well happen again.
No They can’t make a tax claim as wages.
He cant claim some kind of higher moral principle made him do it! ffs!
He’s corrupted his primary principle of being a Neoliberal neanderthal!
He took the hand-out the bludger as he usually would say of others the prick.
“Welfare of our workers (TU staff)” eh Jordan–well strangely enough, a major purpose of Govt Taxation is to provide for NZ Citizens welfare–basic infrastructure, health, education, hydro power, Police and border control, etc.etc.
Taxation was not dreamt up just to annoy libertarian toffs and Nashnull’s dirty tricksters. The taxpayers union is a bogus operation, and is obviously Astroturfing. They should be barred from using the word “Union” but that is probably difficult to trademark. Even applying for taxpayer assistance, let alone receiving it, should mark the end of this scabby, undermining, tory lobby group.
Cleangreen you are a gem. Your group has much information about our railway history. You must be part of the go-to people for anyone doing in-depth journalism on our rail. I like the bit about John Key. Was there also some other rich white guy involved? Some people are quite fey when it comes to scenting money for jam.
About the Taxbayers Unison (like it?) I wouldn’t have thought they were essential services. Government should have publicised their request and advised that it had been considered and the decision made that they would have wanted the money to be spent on something of assistance with the virus, and given it, on their behalf, to the Foodbanks, Salvation Army. Now that would be clever politicking with brain.
Hey um, Jordan, are you one of those uh,…bludgers?
The WINZ database of subsidy recipients is typical of a bureaucracy, no more than 5 results returned per keyword entered. It’s not as if they need to show the equivalent of a million full time employees getting paid for the 12 weeks, it’s just the businesses that are going tits up that we want to know about. And it’s funny how in 12 weeks about five times the normal social spend will take place and people like Williams won’t say a word in protest.
Those fuckers are even lower than the Mafia.
” Mafia distributes food to Italy’s struggling residents ”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/mafia-distributes-food-to-italys-struggling-residents
It’s clear to me that the wanky little tax payers union prickettes still have tentacles deep within Labour’s pocketsessssss.
Instead of a tax payer gift to the crafty little Scunthorpe’s ( Make of that word what you will. ) how about OUR IRD instead LEND them OUR money at 22% interest compounding monthly and secured by lien’s on their houses, chattels and assets?
That was the interest being charged my father and mother after the manager of the bnz in timaru set them up to get their farm off them for a crooked little cocktail hour golfing buddy’s son during the dawn of the neoliberal reign of terror we’re now so familiar with.
( bnz manager? You’re dead at the moment, I know that. But here I come none the less. My spirit is in hot pursuit. It will always be.
Curses are like hot coals. When we throw coals at our enemy we both get burned.
You threw the coals, now we’re both burning and here I come. )
————————-
“After brief deliberation, the Taxpayers’ Union board determined the welfare of our employees to be a more pressing immediate concern than ideological purity.”
————————–
OH. MY. GOODNESS.
Well its all come out now who these chumps are and what they are all about, hasn’t it?
Not that they ever fooled anyone.
Perhaps they should change their name to the ‘Taxbludgers Union’ instead.
Why not apply this subsidy/gift to the National Party workers? Money for jam everyone?
Ah how a pandemic induced depression can focus the minds of the most evil amongst us.
The irony of it all as these people who want too deny anything too the majority in the name of neoliberalism when things are just going swimmingly for their supporters but as soon as a correction looms they come running home too Mummy and Daddy with their hands out.
As soon as this is over and it will be eventually these same hypocrites will be banging the austerity drum as loud as they can.
Mr Williams is happy too dine at the taxpayers table as long as he doesn’t have too pay his share of the bill.
Kia ora Martyn.
Could you please find out if there are actually 9 employees?
I am intrigued as to an organisation like tpu has “employees”: doing exactly what?
There is fraudulent behaviour very close to this action.
I wager somewhere in the future the tpu will “fess up” to demonstrate that what they have just done was done to “prove” how incompetent governments (especially labour dominated ones) are with tax payers money.
This utterly hypocritical action stinks.
Just think the tpu has a fan base belonging to the national party and d seymour.
I must remind my associates and managers not to do business with jp’s law firm.
If the heat gets too much they’ll just change their name.
They’ve done so before
It’s been said that COVID-19 is “a great leveller”, but this is a bittersweet new twist to that expression.
11/04/20: the Tax Avoiders’ Union took a government bailout.
I don’t have anything bad to say about the Tax Payers Union.
Thank god you’re the only person in this line-up of comments that hasn’t said anything bad. It’s been a great read up to you. I wonder which union you’re in.
Buy Bitcoin.
definitely not.
Interesting to see Jordan Williams is now a state dependent, as are his TU cohorts.
For some time I have been trying to fathom TU’s purpose for operating. That is other than being a beneficiary bashing cling on hanging off National’s backside! Is TU a business? Or is it an ambiguous political wing of National?
I would love to know what Comrade Williams put on his benefit application form describing his “business” and reasons for needing government assistance at this time!
Comments are closed.