Prog Blog's comment on the budget

Check out this:

Tax cuts are not tax cuts unless they are accompanied by matching spending cuts -- otherwise they are merely tax deferrals, taxes are just pushed into the future with interest added. 

...

Spending increases financed with debt instead of current tax increases are tax increases, with the taxes to arrive at a future date.

John Key and Bill Engish are tax raisers! oh the irony.

If they are going to raise taxes - couldn't they spend the money on something, uh, worthwhile? Something that would maybe create some jobs?

Great choice for Labour in Mt Albert

The Labour party has apparently selected David Shearer as its candidate in Mt Albert.

This is a spectacularly good choice.

He has a good cv. An excelent cv. He is currently second in charge at the UN in Iraq. The world knows he is qualified. He is part of a rejuvenation on the left. The other parties - National, Greens and Act - are all recycling MPs. Why would you vote for someone who is already an MP?

There were some very high quality candidates there - and three or four of them are headed for parliament, Prog Blog thinks. Shearer is great for nation-wide profile in a by-election.

The right have been panicked about him. They know he is a strong choice,. On that: It is nonsense to say he supports privatising the army. You know someone has a weak argument when they have to lie to make their point. National has been lying about Shearer and privatisation. Shearer said, in a think piece for a policy discussion organisation, that in a catastrophe like Srebinica where the Dutch government knew it couldn't prevent an impending genocide, why wouldn't you put anyone in who could stop the rape and murder of civilians? If you have to pay them so what? It's better than genocide and it avoids brining international assistance into disrepute - as happened when the West stood by and watched the murders in Srebinica of 8000 people. Innocent people.

Matt McCarten, who never misses a chance to distort something the Labour Party says, opposes Shearer's view. No surprise there. He also supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Srebinica - he blamed the Moslems and said at the time the world should be supporting the socialist-in-name murderers. What does he think the world should have done - send in our own army? Nope, he strongly opposed that. Or support Shearer's alternative? Nope. That only leaves supporting the genocide. The other weak evasions were all tried in Europe at the time, and didn't work.

Shearer has first hand experience of these horrifying events - and of weak international attempts top intervene. That is part of what makes him an excellent choice.

Shearer's ideas were written for a think tank. An organisation that exists to promote ideas. The right, and the stupid parts of the left, hate that, because they are opposed to ideas.