Last week I pointed out how Jacinda is our new Michael Joseph Savage in that he was also an incrementalist who was pushed to create the great welfare reforms he is now celebrated for…
The left love Michael Joseph Savage. Every Labour MP who wishes to push their left wing credentials have photos of him hanging in every electorate office and Minister’s room.
Savage is lauded as the creator of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.
He was swamped when he went into public as NZers gushed over how he had saved them all.
The most hilarious truth, provided by insights from John A Lee who served in Savage’s Cabinet and was the anti-Phil Twyford of his day, (in that he actually built Houses) paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage .
The truth is that Savage was incredibly centrist and not a radical at all. Backed up by the neoliberal Walter Nash and conservative manipulator Peter Fraser, Savage did all he could to stop transformative change, it was actually Savage’s Caucus who forced his hand repeatedly to be transformative.
The exact same dynamics are at play inside Jacinda’s Labour Government.
…my conclusion was that if we were to see transformative change under Jacinda, it would be the Caucus factions who would have to generate the ideological friction for that, however Jacinda’s first month of her second term is so dire I think we need to recalibrate our expeditions far lower than a comparison with Michael Joseph Savage, I fear Jacinda is our Obama.
Obama had the soaring rhetoric, he had the tinkering around the edges, he had the global adoration after the self mutilating Bush years, but he also bombed 10 times as many with drone strikes than Bush did…
Two terms and 540 strikes later, Obama leaves the White House after having vastly expanding and normalizing the use of armed drones for counterterrorism and close air support operations in non-battlefield settings—namely Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
…Obama was a reminder that no matter how kind the individual, the American President sits on a throne built by the Military Industrial Complex and as such, you are its servant, not the other way around.
If we evaluate the first month of Jacinda’s second term it is glaringly apparent that while she is personally kind, she sits on a throne built by the neoliberal State, and as such they rule her, she doesn’t rule them.
- The decision to support a racist drug law despite 48% voting against it.
- The decision to give billions to speculators.
- The decision to rule out a wealth tax.
- The decision to rule out lifting benefits.
- The decision to allow house prices to erupt.
Jacinda’s Neokindness is an empty calorie and while it makes the middle classes feel good, it’s doing sweet bugger all for everyone else.
The neoliberal Wellington bureaucrats you’ve never voted for or heard of run NZ, not the Government.
Elections change Governments, Revolutions change the State.
We need a revolution through an election to change the neoliberal State.
With the Greens gagged and tethered with vacant baubles, Labour are now a one trick pony, they saved us from Covid, and that’s all they’ve promised to continue doing.
Luckily for Labour, the rest of the planet is doing such an appalling job containing the virus, we look spectacular in comparison.
Labour may be a one trick pony, but right now, it’s the only trick that counts.
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So Right and a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT to those screaming for help.
The abuse I am getting of sorts when on post your posts in to so called left political pages on Facebook I am on re beneficiaries getting a rise is disgusting.
The left in NZ is no more left Than the National party centrist is.
So long as I am okay everyone else can go to hell reigns supreme.
The old Go Get A Job is the standard answer when a huge chunk of people on benefits are not able to work or can’t get jobs for various reasons like ageism racism or whatever .
So the bottom 25% of NZ is screwed whichever way they look.
A number of the over 50 NGOs who wrote that ‘letter to Jacinda’ last week suggesting an increase in benefits, have been dealing with the increasingly nasty practical fallout of Jacinda’s “NeoKindness” for three years. Neo liberalism as the prevailing state and 1%ers system, has been driving down working class New Zealanders share of wealth, and home ownership rates, and real wages for over 35 years.
So what the PM and Robbo are doing is not new–but it is way past time to firstly disrupt, then organise a political movement, for retiring Neo liberalism in 2023. All those NGOs should be co-opted to play an ongoing co-ordinated role in that. Even the NZCTU, Labours most faithful cheerleader, may get the point when Fair Pay Agreements are either not enacted, or enacted as a shadow of the original intent of forming a nationwide wage floor in various industries.
It is just not good enough to have a shower of shit such as two tier benefit systems and blatant speculator assistance from this large majority Labour Govt. Fight back–strikes, and regular public action–wherever Labour MPs turn up, has to be the rule now. If the Labour Māori Caucus can be an internal opposition, all the better. We have to act directly, or be reduced to lamenting “Blairism NZ style” for three years.
TM. The Guardian reports that Jacinda Ardern laughed when told of the letter penned by the whose who of NGO’s requesting an increase in benefits. That is not what I would call the politics of kindness.
At the very least Helen or Heather or somebody should have told Ardern the appropriate response to be making in such circumstances.
I’m thinking that Ardern was a socialist when she saw that other people had things which she didn’t have. Then she got them herself and was a socialist no more.
It is not what I would call the politics of kindness believing the Guardian saying that Jacinda Ardern laughed when told of the letter requesting an increase in benefits.
Is it a second hand hearsay out-of-context bit turned into a narrative? You know, somewhere in the same half hour she laughed about something and forever that will be superglued to her and any discussion about benefits?
You know, how “There will be ever ever ever ever ever be any strikes while I’m. Prime Minister?” was scumbaggingly created out of a comment in a debate.
“Hello Prime Minister, there’s a letter from the heads of a whole lot of NGO heads asking for a rise in benefits.”
Ardern laughs, laughs so much she falls from her chair. “Tell them to fuck off and stop being silly,” she says. That’s the depiction.
I would take some of what Tova O’Brian wrote in that article with a grain of salt.
@ Tiger Mountain, The clue, is your point about “real wages for over 35 years.” In short there is a problem, when the government raises benefits, the benefits are increasingly becoming the same or in some cases less than wages, showing how poor NZ wages really are.
This is because increasingly there are new ways to avoid paying wages and ‘minimum’ standards under employment law. Some examples are the Chorus workers who more than 90% of those checked by the Labour inspectorate were falling below basic employment standards aka minimum wages. Likewise horticulture, where people are paid per amount of product picked, rather than hourly. Soon it hollows out the industry where normal workers will not work there due to the unfair wages and conditions
… the neoliberal solution (backed by woke and some unions) is to increase immigration to fill the below NZ standard jobs, this has been increasing 18% year on year under labour and National …. now NZ visas/jobs/degrees are becoming a Ponzi where industry in NZ are now making money from work permits around labour, free interns, contract workers, paying back wages, company structures to avoid paying for labour, and then due to the increase in population more jobs are needed, like aged care for people’s aged parents and nurses, teachers, support workers, social workers, prison officers, justice workers, construction and thus bringing in even more people. Every person coming to NZ to full a ‘skill shortage’ for a low wage, low skilled job like a support nurse worker, can have an unemployed spouse, aged parents and multiple children who need to be supported in NZ too.
Going forward there are a huge amount of problems under the conditions, from the basic, (not getting real income taxes and housing shortages) to the point where NZ qualifications become meaningless and domestic youth/middle aged/elderly in NZ decide not to go into the workforce at all (especially with the ease of redundancy) as it’s not worth it.
In the case of supermarkets many workers have been shut out from basic jobs in the past decade as more and more people come into NZ to compete for them aka in 2010 people were queuing for jobs but supermarket type jobs were on the ‘work shortages’ list and one of the top ways to get NZ residency. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/thousands-queue-for-150-jobs/ZIUZ4L45IDQ2M2XPBFE23KMHDE/.
It is now easier to go on a benefit, than naviagate unfair wages and conditions and heavy competition for jobs in NZ. Covid has slowed it for now, but you can see government lobbyists are champing at the bit to get the slave fishers and other workers back as soon as they can, even if it is at huge cost to society.
Speaking of echo chamber on race and identity…
Interesting article about the US elections, voting and identity.
Minorities and women – the very people who are supposed to be central to the Democratic coalition – seem to have shifted in Trump’s direction this year
“The prevailing narrative of the last five years has been that Trump seized and maintains power by appealing to the desires of white voters and men (and especially, white men) to preserve the patriarchy and white supremacy. However, it seems difficult to square these talking points with the preliminary exit poll data from this year’s presidential race.”
Let’s start with gender: across racial and ethnic groups, women shifted towards Trump this cycle.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/14/joe-biden-trump-black-latino-republicans
Yes, O’Bomber was far worse than Bush. And that’s saying something. Not only did O’Bomber ramp up the attacks on overseas nations and individuals, but he also trashed numerous aspects of civil society. But that’s history, as is Trump; after the orange madman gets removed America faces the prospect of corporate criminal and close-to-demented Biden.
Dmitri Orlov has composed a hilarious piece on the moribund state of American politics, which full of geriatric criminals.
‘Within the sweeping panoramic tableau of the 2020 election, Trump (our hero) appears bathed in a golden sunset glow of nostalgia for lost American greatness which he forever promises to rekindle. Rest assured, Trump or no Trump, America will never be great again. But Trump’s magic halo extends out from his resplendent orange cranial plumage and enfolds all those who pine for the lost Pax Americana and fear and loathe what America is fast becoming—which is, to put it bluntly, a holding tank for degenerates of every stripe presided over by a freak show. They pine for a time when men were manly and women womanly, when secretaries were flattered when their bosses took time away from their busy schedules to rub up against them, and when everyone was either a WASP, or worked hard on trying to look and act like one, or kept to their assigned station in life and knew better than to get too uppity. They want to believe that the ethnic melting pot can still produce noble alloys, preferably Corinthian bronze, and certainly not clinker or slag.
Arrayed against our fearless orange-hued leader, who at 74 is no spring chicken himself, is a ghoulish gaggle of geriatric gerontocrats. There is Joe Biden, 77, whose brain ran away and joined a circus some years ago but who imagines himself to be president-elect, or senator, or vice-president, or something. Having spent eight years lurking in the shadows as Obama’s VP, Biden is as fit to lead as a pig is kosher after rubbing its side against a corner of a synagogue. To assist Biden in his dodderings there is his party-appointed nanny, Kamala Harris, a mere slip of a girl at 56.
Also haunting the balcony of the American mausoleum is Nancy Pelosi, 80, who still runs the House of Representatives even though proper employment for her at this point would be up on a pole keeping the birds off the corn. There is also Bernie Sanders, 79, a sad pagliaccio whose permanent role in the political Commedia dell’Arte that the Democratic Party stages every four years is to simulate democracy by cheerleading crowds of young imbeciles in Act I, to feign death after falling off his pogo stick in Act II, and to stagger to his feet, wave and smile for the curtain call.
Last but not least, there is the horrid harpy Hillary Clinton, who is relatively young at 73 but whose putrid smell and cadaverous, ghastly visage are not longer fit for public display except in most delicately contrived circumstances. Hidden even further backstage is the suppurating cadaver of George Soros who, at 90, is still pulling the strings and wreaking havoc in the US and around the world. (His minions had recently spread color revolution to Armenia, in turn causing it to “elect” Pashinyan, a choice imbecile and a traitor, who then lost a big chunk of Armenian territory to Azerbaijan.) I could mention quite a few other financial corpses and oligarchic cadavers, but will refrain, to avoid giving you nightmares. Nobody lives forever, not even Henry Kissinger, 97, and so all we have to do is wait.
In healthy societies, older leaders age out and make room for younger leaders who take over for them after a lengthy period of study and apprenticeship. In sick societies, older leaders cling to power with no one competent there to replace them and once they die are replaced by traitors and criminals. The USSR and the USA are two such examples. The late Soviet serial gerontocracy of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, who for a time haunted the balcony of the Lenin mausoleum and, once dispatched to the netherworld, were swiftly replaced by the traitorous duo of blabbermouth Mikhail Gorbachëv and Drunk President Boris Yeltsin, was a tragedy for Russia. The resulting die-off was of the same order of magnitude as the losses incurred during World War II. In accordance with the worn-out cliché about history repeating, the current American gerontocracy is more of a farce than a tragedy, but its results are likely to be no less lethal for the population.
To complete this ghastly tableau, in the ongoing US presidential election, an almost-dead candidate and his charming assistant have been voted for by an army of the undead: voters that have mailed in their ballots in spite of being deceased. I have spot-checked a bit of the incriminating evidence myself, and I am pretty sure that there were over 11,000 such voters in a single Michigan county alone. But this is by no means a local scam: among many other vote-counting shenanigans, it appears that there was a nationwide effort to order mail-in ballots for dead people, fill them out for Biden, and mail them in. You might say that this is a human rights issue: why deprive dead people of their right to vote? Isn’t it about time to stop discriminating against the dead? Perhaps LGBTQ should be amended to LGBTQD for “Dead.” But why stop there? Why not also add a “U” for the unborn and stop this unpardonable discrimination against abortions?
In any case, dead voters for Biden turn out to be just the tip of an entire iceberg of election fraud. There are also the over 1.8 million nonexistent yet registered voters discovered by Judicial Watch back in September. Add to that the faulty voting system, creepily named “Dominion,” which miscounted votes to favor Biden. Add to that the undeservedly kid-gloved and fawning press coverage afforded to Biden and the US mass media’s overwhelmingly hostile attitude toward Trump. Add to that the fraudulent poll data which, just as prior to the 2016 election, was contrived to make a fraudulent Biden victory seem plausible. Add to that the amply funded organizations such as BLM and Antifa (in which the “Anti-” prefix is gratuitous, this organization in fact being very much “Fa…”) which have been ordered to protest, loot and riot in many major US cities, moving their mercenaries from location to location, where they then recruit useful idiots among the locals. What this adds up to is a vast, brazen, carelessly self-incriminating conspiracy to overthrow a sitting president through election fraud.
If you believe even for a moment that I am scandalized, disgusted and outraged by this trampling of the sacred principles of democracy, then pardon me while I shake my head sardonically while quietly chuckling to myself. No, I am not the least bit upset. In fact, this development fills me with optimism for the future. I believe that this ghastly institutional failure is a wonderful development that offers great hope to the rest of the world, and perhaps even to the US itself, although the political environment in the US appears to be rather hopeless irrespective of how horribly or wonderfully its ridiculous electoral system can be made to function.
In any case, it would be futile to try to give the US some semblance of a democratic election system. It would be like trying to clean up a beach by picking up empty beer cans around a beached whale. The presidency, after four years of ham-handed efforts to unseat a president using false evidence, is a failed institution. Congress, which now nonchalantly overspends federal revenue by a factor of three, is a fiscal zombie. The Federal Reserve, which is now a pure pyramid scheme, is a financial zombie. And then there is the rest of the ridiculously bloated US economy, which is waiting for a stiff gust of wind to cause ephemeral wealth to flood out of stocks and bonds and into cash, much of it evaporating in the process and the rest causing a tsunami of consumer price inflation.
In the course of this spectacle, the false image of the US as a shining city on a hill, a beacon for huddled masses yearning to breathe free and a beneficent global policeman safeguarding “universal human rights,” enforcing “universal human values” and spreading “freedom and democracy” around the world is being stomped into the dirt, having excrement poured all over it, and being stomped into the dirt some more. As the curtain descends on this final act of Pax Americana, the image of the orange enfant terrible and the senile puppet with his child-nurse in tow playing on the teeter-totter of electoral dysfunction on the playground of second childhood will forever remain etched into the retinas of the whole world. The whole world will then be able to move on and look for worthier role models and for less corrupt policemen. And that’s progress!
The collapse of the USA will make the collapse of the USSR look like a stroll through a leafy park and a boat ride on a placid pond. I’ve been saying this for 15 years now. My message is still there, for all those who wish to understand what’s been happening and to keep their sanity.’
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2020/11/watch-this.html
As for Jacinda, well sure, she was definitely con-artist of the decade, smiling incessantly as she lied to the masses about everything from climate change to housing.
The trouble is, all other major parties put up worse candidates.
Jacinda or no Jacinda, NZ is going to be one of the better places on the planet to survive the first few phases of the gathering shit-storm. Despite the best efforts of politicians to wreck everything via rampant consumerism, there are still some things in NZ worth having.
Not sure if what is occurring in NZ under Ardern can be called neokindness, seems more like getting around NZ’s labour laws to lower employment standards and racist to boot.
If analysed what is going on, rather than profiting from it or politicising it, then NZ would not be having as many problems with poverty and lack of innovation and low domestic uptake into the NZ workforce, which has a follow on effect to benefits.
The welfare system in NZ is something to keep, but keep pushing demand onto it from increasing poverty, then it will become dysfunctional like our housing situation.
Thoughts from those who need foreign labour and also want to pick the Nationality of the foreign labour too… opinion from our NZ courgette grower championed by the pro immigration lobby..
“Heap is a long-standing and vocal supporter of the RSE scheme. In 2017 he told The Northland Age he considered quitting the business because the government wouldn’t let him bring in more than nine workers from Thailand “with the skills and stamina” to pick his crop.
He also told the paper he had been told he “would have to take Pacific Islanders.” but he wasn’t keen citing “a potential clash of cultures.” He had “given up all hope of employing locals” because they weren’t reliable.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018772730/slim-pickings-reporting-the-shortage-of-labour-for-fruit-and-veges
A degree in communications isn’t qualification in making anyone’s lives better, it’s learning how to sell a message.
The country has been sold the smiley head nodding kindness brand.
Just like in real life, when it’s all marketing and a shabby over hyped product, the reaction will be negative.
Slick non event Obama gave us Trump, I wonder what Jacindas legacy for the disillusioned will be.
You lot here probably all mostly voted for Jacinda, ‘cos Jacinda is the “bestest evar”. I, however, recognised a long time ago that Jacinda was merely a populist, so instead voted for the great Rimmer.
Rimmer: I’m a competitive man, Kryten. Always have been. That’s what makes me what I am.
Kryten: We’re all perfectly well aware of what you are.
I am confused about who,is to blame for the inaction of this government to solve the problems of the poor and disposest.
In other posts MB has called for more public servants but this post seems to be saying they are at the heart of the problem .
In Chch these public servants went against expert advice and tried to repair a school hall but after spending $7 million have excepted they were wrong. We have a new road that was built on a swamp and surprise it has sunk causing delay and huge cost overrun . We have the ongoing problems with CDHB and other government run agencies.
The main problem seems to be a total lack of accountability and butt covering which goes uncovered due to a lack of a proper public news investigation.
Jacinda is the leader now those of us on the centre right wish we had. Not me of course but the luvvies with property are worshipping at her feet.
Newsflash – she IS the leader we actually have on the centre right.
If she is not going to transform to your beloved left I have to ask why she’s there at all? There’s zero difference between her and Saint John Key. Well she’s made rich people richer on paper than he ever did!
The comparisons with Obama are excellent. Obama campaigned the third time for President, Biden wins an impotent presidency and Obama book sales (due out this week conveniently) will hit record levels.
Obama is a true capitalist. He used Biden and this election as the most cunning and cost efficient book tour in history!
Schooled by the office of Tony Blair. With no ideological or political roadblocks now she can revert to globalist form. The Blairite has the Labour party over a barrel and they know it. Look at how she has locked up Angry’s balls in her purse over the dope vote.
The most fascinating part of the whole thing is how brazen Robbo and her are. The political equivalent of shitting in the left’s cornflakes.
Blaming the bureaucrats is letting this and previous governments off the hook. From NZ’s dumbest PM (Bolger) on successive governments have had the ability to restructure the bureaucracy and haven’t. NZ’s public service have taken the worst of the left with the turds of the right and created a megaclusterfuck that no government nor minister nor parliamentarian wants to confront. This is weak and pisspoor.
I must agree with you on that. We have had shockingly bad bureaucrats for decades, and the politicians have been (are) too cowardly to do anything about it.
…Obama was a reminder that no matter how kind the individual, the American President sits on a throne built by the Military Industrial Complex and as such, you are its servant, not the other way around.
Eisenhower Farewell Address
https://youtu.be/OyBNmecVtdU?t=4
If we evaluate the first month of Jacinda’s second term it is glaringly apparent that while she is personally kind, she sits on a throne built by the neoliberal State, and as such they rule her, she doesn’t rule them.
Well said.
Obummer
Whilst there is one comment above re the farcical USA presidential election, how come there’s not a word about on RNZ “national news”? I don’t read the NZ MSM (so-called) as it only disinforms readers. Who wishes to “read” such tripe?!
Well, for decades I’ve said to some others that we don’t get “news” in this country; we get disinformation & lies!
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