Wednesday Morning Coffee

Claire Trevett was in damage control mode at the NZ Herald as she scrambled to publish an article covering National's side of the story about sacking Penny Simmonds.

Simmonds must go, no bones about that, but what will NZME and aligned media do to fend that off?

According to Luxon, Penny Simmonds is doing a great job, only not good enough so that she is allowed to make any decisions about her Disability Ministry, cos she messed up so badly Cabinet now need to do all the decision making.

Something Chippy has said is "Extraordinary" and a "Massive vote of no confidence in the Minister".

"Get her out", cried the wallpaper.

"Real people's lives have been terribly impacted", shouted the floor to the ceiling.

Simmonds messed with front line services after Willis and Luxon utterly ruled out any such effects from their unaffordable zombie tax cuts.

This was hundreds of time worse than any Clare Curran debacle over a coffee and a missing appointment in a diary.

Luxon called for Poto Williams to go over far less - sweating and pointing like a pig - saying she was lost at sea when she was not - but now Luxon is a total hypocrite and right wing media know it - so we've seen dead cats slammed on the table this week - and over at RNZ Morning Report Ingrid Hipkiss left out the topic entirely this morning when she interviewed Chris Hipkins.

NewsHub have the issue between their teeth, TVNZ Breakfast also led with the diabolical Simmonds story and Stuff raised the flag into headlines as I wrote these words.

The Simmonds must go flag rippled in the breeze as media ships set sail and we the public waited on Luxon to be a Prime Minister and do the right thing - for the sake of the disabled.

But no, there was no Prime Minister leading the way, just a cheesy CEO hiding in his cabin, memorising lines and brushing things off.

"I still have confidence in her although she has not handled disability allowances well", said Luxon as he made vague noises about a funding uplift for that Ministry in the Budget.

The "top up" was all about damage control and politicians reacting to another dire cock up...which all goes back to their distance from details, failure to consult and sheer Dunning-Kruger over confidence in their numbers, now marked by so many basic errors.

The cruelty of the Neoliberal Ideology that it would mess with front line services for the disabled and their carers - should be grounds for Simmonds to be sacked if we had leaders who could admit to unacceptable incompetence - but we have psychopaths at the wheel who want to gloss past that in my opinion.

We have people who covered up the Uffindell Report in power.

Part of the wriggling to free National from accountability has been slamming down dead cats on the table - like the ECE "Family Boost" policy and the decision to suddenly go public over the Chinese hack in August 2021 - but there's also another method used by Atlas Network operatives.

One of those is suggesting Chris Hipkins must go - not Penny Simmonds.

Bryce Edwards wrote yesterday in the NZ Herald that "Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax" - when what Grant Robertson actually said was "There are things we did not get to do and I am going to talk about one, and my colleagues will not be surprised, New Zealand's tax system is unfair and unbalanced. We are almost alone in the OECD in not taxing wealth and assets in some form. Our current system entrenches inequality. It's not my place any longer to say specifically what the answer is here, but I do know the answers are out there".

Bryce Edwards goes further to say ...

"It really is beyond parody that such senior members of the last Government are suddenly condemning the current tax system as grossly unfair only after they’re out of power."

A chapter heading screams "Robertson and Hipkins blocked tax reform" and another yells ‘Flippy Chippy Flop’ and lastly "Will Labour voters get fooled again?"

Here Bryce Edwards cherry picks through selected commentary from favourites ( Tame, Trotter etc ) who agree with him and leaves out the reality and complexity of the detail - for example how Chippy's position on tax was related to timing, mandates and economic conditions and was stated - in a term by term context. So next term things are different and there is no contradiction just a more pressing need. It is also understood Cabinet made the decisions on Labour's Tax positions and that Grant was for tax reform along with David Parker. None of that complexity or nuance rates a mention by Edwards - in order to cast both Chippy and Grant as opportunists before the NZ Herald readership.

This is manufacturing dissent out of Victoria University where Edwards' "Democracy Project" is based - and funded opaquely by "unknown philanthropy".

I note - some time ago Bryce Edwards selected something I wrote about OIA requests and named me in an NZ Herald article - and in doing so he took an article I wrote that shot down Andrea Vance's griping for 97% of it - and Edwards selected the small part of the article 3% that took up her side - as a matter of factual balance - distorting the entirety of what I had written - and also branded me as "a hostile activist".

The lefties are always identified as lefties in his articles - even fake useful lefties like Trotter - and small selections that fit the narrative are cherry picked - in the "round up".

These kinds of games - create mindsets in the voting public - although I might add that Bryce Edwards is boringly "Beltway" in his influence - his work comes across to me as just another way of fomenting and reinforcing Neoliberalism upon the poor in New Zealand.

Bryce Edwards appears to work for the maintaining of "Zombie ideas" using paraphrasing and cherry picking and recently he ran around media shouting how "This could be New Zealand's Brexit" when the Atlas Network Tax Payers Union ran a single poll in early February that put ACT 7% up on their January 2024 poll result - therefore Edwards concluded the public were swinging in behind Seymour's "The Treaty Principles Bill".

Yeah but the next polls all showed that was an outlier poll - and Edwards and his "Brexit moment" went down the Atlas Network colonial toilet. ( Flushing nosies ).

Someone sent me a great article penned by Jonathan Boston, published in NewsRoom - this morning - concerning why "Zombie Ideas" prevail and "Ghost Ideas" never make it into law.

Zombie ideas are failed ideas proven not to work - like trickle down economics ( see Luxon lifting all boats ) or Military Boot camps ( Mr Plod and his lack of evidence ), or the idea that fewer laws and less regulation is always good for society ( Seymour ) ; the idea that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced effectively solely via price-based mechanisms with no need for complementary measures...( see Luxon and ETS as he scraps all Climate action ).

Boston writes ...

"Local examples of ghost policies might include the absence of a comprehensive capital gains tax (or wealth or land taxes), the lack of congestion charging, the repeated failure to tackle major environmental externalities, and the absence of effective measures to prevent urban development in high-risk locations – despite massive damage from floods."

Boston points out that the role of powerful organised interests must surely loom large as to why Zombie Ideas persist. After all, many policy ideas, despite their limited or unreliable supporting evidence, often serve the interests of specific groups, businesses or sectors of the economy.

It's those kinds of Zombie Ideas that have distorted the situation and led Penny Simmonds to mess up and it's those ideas that prevent Luxon from sacking her.

The Atlas Network at the NZ Initiative represent those powerful organised interests behind Zombie Ideas and one of the share holding directors at the NZ Initiative was Chancellor at Victoria University for most of the time that Bryce Edwards was operating his Democracy project there.

Draw your own conclusions but I think this is broadly the reality we find ourselves stuck in today - and why the left will rise again and soon - and that's all I have to say about that.

What do you think?

Wednesday Morning Coffee

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