Desiderata (Excerpts).
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.
Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
No less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
Keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
--- Max Ehrmann, 1927
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
National 's Neo-Liberal trashing of New Zealand.
Kia-ora
I am mindful of the quote.
“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte
Generally I have a somewhat optimistic view of humanity. I gave New Zealand's National Government the benefit of doubt, by ascribing their sheer lunacy to incompetence.
However, even politicians cannot be that incompetent.
Trashing a top class education system, trashing WINZ, trashing ACC. Not to mention trashing NZ as an egalitarian society and causing a recession to deepen with idiot policy like public service layoffs and tax cuts for Hawaii holidays.
It is malice.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/155484/ehrenreich%3A_how_corporations_and_local_governments_rob_the_poor_blind
“wage theft nets employers at least $100 billion a year and possibly twice that. As for the profits extracted by the lending industry, Gary Rivlin, who wrote Broke USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business, says the poor pay an effective surcharge of about $30 billion a year for the financial products they consume and more than twice that if you include subprime credit cards, subprime auto loans, and subprime mortgages.”
“They want to dismantle public education altogether and run schools as businesses, judged as “successes” or “failures” based on abstract data taken from high-stakes standardized test scores.”
“The right are so envious of the poor, they want to take what little the poor have left”.
Our neo-liberals see how much wealth has been stolen by their counterparts in the USA and they want to repeat the process here.
They see tax payer dollars going into schools, Social insurance and infrastructure.
Even though they do not pay taxes themselves, their money is in trusts, untaxed capital gains or offshore shelters, they are trying to find a way of increasing their cut, of taxes WE PAY.
We forget, at our peril, why neo-liberalism is so popular among the wealth stealers.
“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte
Generally I have a somewhat optimistic view of humanity. I gave New Zealand's National Government the benefit of doubt, by ascribing their sheer lunacy to incompetence.
However, even politicians cannot be that incompetent.
Trashing a top class education system, trashing WINZ, trashing ACC. Not to mention trashing NZ as an egalitarian society and causing a recession to deepen with idiot policy like public service layoffs and tax cuts for Hawaii holidays.
It is malice.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/155484/ehrenreich%3A_how_corporations_and_local_governments_rob_the_poor_blind
“wage theft nets employers at least $100 billion a year and possibly twice that. As for the profits extracted by the lending industry, Gary Rivlin, who wrote Broke USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business, says the poor pay an effective surcharge of about $30 billion a year for the financial products they consume and more than twice that if you include subprime credit cards, subprime auto loans, and subprime mortgages.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/153858/5_biggest_lies_about_the_right-wing_corporate-backed_war_on_our_schools/?page=entire
“They want to dismantle public education altogether and run schools as businesses, judged as “successes” or “failures” based on abstract data taken from high-stakes standardized test scores.”
“The right are so envious of the poor, they want to take what little the poor have left”.
Our neo-liberals see how much wealth has been stolen by their counterparts in the USA and they want to repeat the process here.
They see tax payer dollars going into schools, Social insurance and infrastructure.
Even though they do not pay taxes themselves, their money is in trusts, untaxed capital gains or offshore shelters, they are trying to find a way of increasing their cut, of taxes WE PAY.
We forget, at our peril, why neo-liberalism is so popular among the wealth stealers.
Because it works for them!