Here come the consultants from Atlas
Here come the consultants…
Public sector cuts: Education ministry prepares to use consultants
Government refusal to release charter school information alarming
Consultants needed for education system changes – Christopher Luxon
David Seymour’s charter school dream gains momentum
… the crazy thing about conspiracy theories isn’t that they aren’t real, it’s that the most crazy and outlandish conspiracies like the anti-vaxxers, like the Qanonners, the Cookers and the Settler rednecks get all the attention when real and actual conspiracies are occurring right in front of our noses.
It’s always been the rich, the corporates, the Trans Nationals that have actively conspired to see their interests implemented while our emotions are manipulated.
The Atlas Network is funded by petrol oligarchs and climate change polluters who find the social media pressure points the way the old Cambridge Analytics did. They can micro target and mine resentment better than anyone else in the game, and they pass those findings along allowing for local think tanks to plot legislative change welded to the culture war pressure points and allow hate algorithms to do the rest.
George Monbiot first published in January linking the Atlas Network’s influence in British politics.
Look at this agenda:
A crash programme of massive cuts;
demolishing public services;
privatising public assets;
centralising political power;
sacking civil servants;
sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs;
destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world;
supporting landlords against tenants;
criminalising peaceful protest;
restricting the right to strike.
…this is the Atlas Agenda and this is the exact same bloody agenda being proposed here, in fact I can find an example of every single one of those implemented since this new hard right racist climate denying Government came in!
Why does all of this matter so much? Well look at who is funding the Atlas Network! It’s all the worst industries with the worst records and with the money to ensure laws are written for them and not against them, that’s extraordinarily dangerous!
Monbiot makes this point…
And who, in turn, are the junktanks? Many refuse to divulge who funds them, but as information has trickled out we have discovered that the Atlas Network itself and many of its members have taken money from funding networks set up by the Koch brothers and other rightwing billionaires, and from oil, coal and tobacco companiesand other life-defying interests. The junktanks are merely the intermediaries. They go into battle on behalf of their donors, in the class war waged by the rich against the poor. When a government responds to the demands of the network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it.
…Oil, coal, tobacco, right wing billionaires, the fucking Koch brothers, dark money influencing our political system so much so that we see the exact same agenda being rolled out here!
As the push for more privatisation, steeper austerity and race baiting policy collides with extreme weather events, destabilising geopolitics and increasingly desperate first time home buyers bled out from rising mortgage rates and beneficiaries kicked off welfare, the only winner will be private prisons and the bloody Atlas Network!
Shouldn’t we be talking a lot more about the Atlas Network and their libertarian extremist pro climate change polluting sociopaths?
We can’t beat this hard right racist climate denying Government if we don’t know where their agenda is coming from!
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“ Deer Hunting with Jesus” by Joe Bageunt has an insightful analysis into how working class America has been seduced into RW Republicanism. Joe describes a process that is all too apparent here.
Kiwijoker Yep, I have that book too, and I reread it. It’s likely what Luxon was doing in provincial P North, but I can’t be bothered reading his rant. He’s an awful man, and scaringly smugly ignorant.
The bottom line has to be sound good quality education, but I do not for one moment believe that this is what these people want, and I know more about it than Luxon or Seymour do. We had it right before, and we performed well according to international criteria, and this is where we should consider looking, back. If necessary consult some octogenarian school inspectors; they could be daunting, but my experience of them both here and in the UK, was basically constructive, and most importantly, they were pupil focused, which is how it should be. New Zealand let’s it’s children down at every level and our universities a travesty of what they should be. We see that every day with their woeful products in Parliament
That is indeed a good book. It shows why working-class people in the US vote against their own interests. But as far as education goes we know what a good system looks like. There are numerous examples from around the world where they get good results – although often using different methods. Why we have two go down the privatisation route rather than copy one of these I don’t know. Well of course I do it’s an ideological necessity for Act.
guerilla surgeon. With respect, you appear to be assuming that Act wants a well educated populace. I don’t think this is necessarily so. Education has been dumbed down under both major parties, which is what suits neolibs. What Act wants delivered is largely an unknown, and as you say there are some good public systems in other countries. This could just be Seymour wanting to create another income stream for private providers and not about education per se, which is the least sinister explanation.
A challenge for Luxon. If the government hires a single consultant who has recently received redundancy compensation, will you resign?
They claim that consultants are cheaper, because of course they don’t get any holiday pay, redundancy, sick leave or anything like that. But most of the ones I’ve come across charge like a wounded bloody buffalo to make up for that. I honestly don’t know enough about it to come to a conclusion but I suspect the government is spouting bullshit as usual.
The calibre of consultants is important, and extremists are generally not a good idea. Shaneel Lal as an education advisor in an area such as gender ideology which has no scientific basis, and who comes from a very different sort of immigrant culture, may not have been the wisest choice. Other government departments may have made choices of “ consultants” lacking in objectivity or expertise, but having loud voices. Time was when consultants were accomplished persons at the apex of their own careers, but not so now.
No surprise the name Atlas, in honour of that sociopath Ayn Rand who ended up on charity and welfare. This is what the funders of National want, they will however blame it in ACT when there is an electoral backlash.
germany in 1935 being taken over by entitled right wing redneck racists ring a bell with anyone .
Yes, but the speech police has been very much a left initiative, as has global censorship, and ceding autonomy of our health service to the questionable unelected individuals of the WHO.
You must be kidding. The left isn’t AFAIK banning schoolbooks, refusing to let any government servant talk about climate change, shutting down newspapers, arresting opposition politicians who speak out, or trying to force religious speech on schools.
gs. I don’t know what AKAIK means, but I do know that we are living in the breakdown of society, such as it is, and that the major political parties have all been complicit in this.
Here, time and time again, issues are presented as “ racist”, when in fact they are anti-people, all people, and it suits elitists just fine having idiots buying into racist diversions when the reality is worse.
Luxon may be a wrecking ball chosen by Key, IMHO, and having to be in a coalition with NZ First who at least have some experienced politicians with functioning brains, may have saved the have-nots from a greater degree of existential wretchedness.
Words fail me with ACT. Seymour’s woke food nonsense looked like a callow youth thinking he’s being sophisticated, but education is vital to the well-being of the whole country, and it’s a moot point whether this suits neo-lib huggers.
Not a good image for those with arachnophobia, but compared to the three headed tick sucking the lifeblood out of the country, I guess that’s the least of our issues.
That the Atlas Network exists is almost unbelievable, like some new Dr. Evil organisation straight outta Janes Bond. This really is a conspiracy theory in reality. Like the hippy’s in the seventies saying the multinational companies would rule the world, well that’s reality today …and that was considered the biggest conspiracy theory of its day.
Totally agree with your take on Atlas Consultants, “overseas experts” and the local revolving door bureaucrats.
Then I saw Chloe on Q&A telling us how the Greens have employed a Natural Justice Consultant, paid for by Parliamentary Services at $5000 per week and after nine weeks (probably too busy to finish the job) there is no report. Or is it a simple delay until the public forgets about migrant exploitation in the green cycling industry?
Joseph Surely Parliamentary Services would require accountability ? After all its our money they are spending, the money of the tax payers who do the real work. Parliamentary Services should have a fiscal responsibility to account for how and what they spend. That seems like “ natural justice” to me.
the great hack didn’t stop with the movie. it’s all gone A.I. weightings and biases. get one to run the country. oh! we already did? christopher and arnold. lol. hologram! is up next as deputy. lord help us.