January 2011

Yesterday I blogged about Labour’s American campaigning company Blue State Digital. Blue State has been in the news too for not very good reasons.

It seems Blue State Digital uses tracking code to snoop on emails their software sends out. We know from Blue States Digital’s own website that the Labour Party here in New Zealand is one of their clients and uses their campaign software, methodology and techniques so one would presume that embedded in the all that American expertise and software is the tracking code allowing Labour to snoop on the emails they send to you.

Blue State Digital (BSD), which used the latest internet technology to mobilise millions of people behind Obama, has been employed to help create a grassroots network across the UK as part of the campaign to stop the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, becoming the far-right party’s first MEP.

The firm began work last week and has already signed up thousands of supporters and donors. As part of the first stage of its campaign BSD and an anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight, has sent thousands of emails asking each recipients to forward it to five friends and make a small donation.The software means campaigners can then track who opens the emails, where they are sent and what happens when they arrive at the other end – tailoring future emails to groups and individuals

Oh how very interesting. Given that Labour studied very closely the Obama campaign and even tried out some of the techniques with the Len Brown campaign it will be very interesting to know if they are using the same code now, or indeed if Len Brown’s campaign used the code. I understand though that email marketing from Len Brown’s campaign was handled by Mike Hutcheson’s company so maybe they didn’t use the Blue State Digital software, but only “Hutch” could tell us that.

To quote the UK website concerned about Blue State Digital’s techniques:

Political campaigns, wherever they are on the political spectrum, should not be using the same sort of tricks as email spammers and those who try to sneakily hunt down anonymous whistleblower sources and contacts, since this will betray the Sensitive Personal Data of their supporters, to some of their political enemies.

Since the Blue State Digital server infrastructure is based in the USA, with lax Data Protection and large scale snooping on foreigners (and on US citizens) by US Government agencies, who else gets to read the Communications Traffic Data of any particular group of political activists or campaign supporters who have been targeted this way ?

Blue Sky Digital were touting their “grassroots” campaign online expertise and tools, to various campaign groups and pressure groups recently.

We might perhaps support some of the aims of this campaign, but not if it uses sneaky email tracking, which contravenes the fundamental data protection principle of prior, informed consent, and which probably also contravenes the Direct Marketing industry codes of practice and European Union wide laws.

Labour needs to confirm categorically that they aren’t doing the same thing here, but since they closely follow the advice of their American advisors, use their tools and also follow trends with UK Labour it is highly probable they are doing this to you too.

If anyone who is on Labour’s mailing list has concerns about whether Labour is using Blue State Digital’s tracking emails then they can forward them to me for analysis.

I was doing a bit of googling the other day, it’s one of the ways I find interesting stuff to blog about. Anyway I came across some very interesting information about high school drop-outs. The information was really about how many successful people there are out there that have no formal qualifications above high school or who dropped out in high school.

I found a list of 751 Names of famous people who dropped out of high school. In that list there are:

Billionaires: 25
Millionaires: uncounted
U.S. Presidents: 8
Astronauts: 1  (Valentina Tereshkova)
Nobel Prize Winners: 10  (6 Literature, 2 Peace, 1 Physics, 1 Chemistry)
Olympic Medal Winners: 8  (7 Gold Medalists, one Silver Medalist)
Oscar Winners: 63
Oscar Nominees: 104  (includes above)
Best-Selling Authors: 55
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients (U.S.’s highest civilian honor): 14
Congressional Gold Medal recipients (U.S.): 12
United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors: 2  (Roger Moore, Angelina Jolie)
Knighthoods: 28
Damehoods: 3

It includes:

Benjamin Franklin: American politician-diplomat-author-printer-publisher-scientist-inventor; co-author and co-signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence; one of the founders of The United States of America; face is pictured on the U.S. one-hundred dollar bill (little formal education [less than two years]; home schooling/life experience).

Arthur Henderson: Nobel Prize-winning British Politician; co-founder of the Labour Party; Foreign Secretary 1929-1931; peace conference president (1934 Nobel Peace Prize) (dropped out of school at age 12 to work in a locomotive parts iron foundry).

The Guardian even did an article about some famous and successful people back in 2008. You’d be surprised at the names there.

Here is a list of some of their notables:

Simon Cowell: left school before the sixth form. He took a few menial jobs, but did not get along well with co-workers and bosses, until his father, an EMI executive, managed to get him a job in the mail room.

Richard Branson: Though he was a poor student, Richard Branson stuck it out at Stowe school until he was 15.

John Major: pilloried during his time as British prime minister for being boring, left school at 16 with three O-levels: history, English language and English literature.

Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr, aka Michael Caine: left school at 16 after gaining four O-levels and did his national service, serving in Germany and in combat in the Korean war.

Of course in New Zealand we have our own people who left school who made a success of themselves, particularly in the political:

Sir Keith Jacka Holyoake, KG, GCMG, CH, QSO, KStJ: The only person to have been bothPrime Minister and Governor-General of New Zealand. At age 12, having left school after his father’s death, Holyoake worked on the family hop and tobacco farm in Riwaka.

Jim Bolger: He left Opunake High School at age 15 to work on the family farm and went on to be the 35th Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Walter Nash: He was born into a poor family and his father was an alcoholic. Nash performed well at school and won a scholarship to King Charles I Grammar School but additional costs associated with attending prevented him from accepting. Nash began employment as a clerk, initially with a lawyer in Kidderminster and then at a factory near Birmingham.

Just  goes to show that a list of degrees doesn’t automatically guarantee you success in life in your chosen profession.

Last night my good mate Jami-lee Ross won the National party selection in Botany.

The selection went to 4 ballots finally coming down to a head to head ballot between Maggie Barry and Jami-lee Ross.

In order, the previous ballots dropped off Ed Saafi, then Darren Gedge, then Aaron Bhatnagar. It was the fall of Aaron’s secondary votes that tipped the balance in favour of Jami-lee, with delegates prefering a local candidate with a proven track record over a carpet-bagger celebrity.

Once again the National party selection process has proven robust and unable to be tampered with, though you won’t hear a squeak from the nay-sayers now that none of their predictions came true.

I will be bold and predict that the National party won’t see Maggie Barry put her name in the hat again.

Meanwhile Labour has selected…if you can call it a selection, Phil Goff’s electorate chair, professional housewife and life-long union hack Michael Wood to take one for the team.

Is Whaleoil Citizen A?

Citizen A – 7pm tonight Triangle TV, replayed 8pm Sunday Sky 89 & Freeview 21

Tune in to join Bomber and his revolving panel of bloggers and Auckland opinion shapers as they offer an up-to-date half hour review of the political media issues of the current week from a very Auckland perspective.

THIS WEEK: Bloggers Cameron Slater & Phoebe Fletcher…

Issue one: Phil Goff gave his state of the Nation address in New Lynn while John Key gave his in Henderson, Goff says the fist $5000 will be tax free while John Key wants to privatize assets and implement austerity measures. No one can pretend that National and Labour are fighting over the centre ground any more. Who won?

Issue two: Did Rodney Hide’s concession to appoint 38 unelected Maori to Auckland Council committees just cost ACT the Epsom seat?

Issue three tonight: Len wants Auckland to be a Green city with a target to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% – Great idea or wanky nonsense?

Join Citizen A Facebook group
TWITTER

Phil Goff likes to comment on dividends from SOEs.

Back in 2009 he said:

Labour leader Phil Goff said yesterday a future government wouldn’t demand excessive dividends from state-owned power companies, and Labour had been wrong not to deal with soaring prices while it held office.

So he says Labour was wrong to take dividends and said that Labour wouldn’t be taking them in the future so power prices could be lower. Compare that to his position today where:

Labour leader Phil Goff said the proposal was a “recipe for soaring power prices” and foreign ownership of the assets.

“Mum and dad investors might get the first bite, but they quickly gravitate to the big investors overseas. Everyone knows that.”

This morning on Morning Report on Red Radio he had this to say:

GEOFF ROBINSON:         So why are you agin [sic] it?

PHIL GOFF:  There’s a whole lot of reasons. Firstly, these are profitable enterprises. They return, you know, the power companies alone, for example, return something like $700 million a year to the government. Why would we want to hand that over when we know the – the certainty is that this will end up in the hands of foreign owners?

Morning Report, 27 Jan 2011

So poor old Phil has already reneged on his statement of 2009, because now he wants to keep the dividends flowing. But it is worse than that. His plan appears to be to rob Peter to pay Paul, rob Paul to pay Peter back again and do that four times over. He has now proposed to used those dividends 4 times over.

In it’s dying days the previous Government signalled its intention to spend the power company dividends at least twice over before they were booted out of office.

Cullen said the dividends would be needed to build new generation, then Parker said the dividends would be used to pay for an unfunded home insulation programme. Someone needs to remind Labour that you can’t spend the same money twice (or in this case three times, and now four times).

Oh – and why is Labour so opposed to the mixed ownership model – when both David Cunliffe and Trevor Mallard are on record as supporting sensible asset sales to deepen New Zealand’s capital markets for mum and dad investors?

It seems Labour really are taking advice from pixies.

I see today that Grant Robertson is spinning the lines he learned on Helen’s knees, when he worked for her, about Crosby|Textor. They just never, ever learn.

What Labour doesn’t tell you is that although National are upfront about their small use of analysts and advisors Crosby|Textor, Labour stays silent on their use of American advisors.

Fortunately though I am more vigilant than the New Zealand media and so since Grant Robertson has again run the Crosby|Textor line it is only fair that I point out that their American adivsors are in the news.

Blue State Digital, which made its name through its work with the 2008 Obama for America campaign, has been acquired by WPP Digital. Yet the firm comes into the WPP fold without one of its key online advertising execs who worked on the Obama team. BSD’s former director of advertising and promotion, a member of Obama’s online ad team, left the firm earlier this month.

Since gaining acclaim during the 2008 presidential election through its Obama campaign work, the integrated digital marketing agency has veered away from political candidate campaigns and broadened its clientele to encompass more advocacy groups, non-profits, unions, sporting organizations, educational institutions, and corporate clients.

Blue State Digital have been integral in Labour’s campaign and the word is they are again working hard for their clients. But how do I know they working for Labour? Because they skite about it of course.

Post-Obama, Blue State Digital is now in high demand. “We have the tools,” says Thomas Gensemer, Blue State’s managing partner, referring to the infrastructure they cre- ated for Obama. “And those alone open up a bunch of markets.”

The firm officially opened its London office this past December and is working for a number of international clients—both political and non-political. Along with its work for Fianna Fáil, New Zealand’s Labour Party and Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, Blue State is running a U.K. political group’s online campaign against the British Nationalist Party, and a web-based PR campaign to oppose new alcohol taxes. The company is also bidding to run the British Labour Party’s online efforts, which are likely to heat up in May after the European Union elections.

So while Labour accuses National that everything they say and do is because of two well respected political strategists across the ditch they in fact are taking advice from American political advisors themselves. I seriously doubt that National is taking very much advice from Crosby|Textor these days but I dare Labour to deny they are still using the strategy, tools and methodologies of Blue State Digital.

Phil Goff can’t be honest about his hair dye, will he be honest and tell us about their American advisors? I doubt it.

I’m on Radio Live today from 3pm – 4pm.

Matthew Hooton couldn’t make it so they called me. I’m on next week as well.

You can listen live via the net or on these frequencies.

Len Brown has compiled his list of 100 things he did in 100 days. He isn’t releasing it yet, its a secret. They aren’t big things, they aren’t even projects most of them and quite a few are just slogans.

If he beleived in himself and his ideas he would promote the really big ideas, especially to get things done like his Rail Loop.

So in the spiriti of good governance Iw ill help him out. Just like i have done with the Labour party in gifting them a slogan, and like Cactus Kate gifting them a tax policy. I gift Len Brown idea number 54.

A Congestion Tax – with all proceeds going to fund his rail loop.

Tonight driving home I had an interesting interaction with local hoodlums and the Police.

As I was turning right into Reagan Road from Great South Road I noticed on my right were two cars in a towing configuration. It was easy to spot them but not apparently for Mr. Moron in front of me in the left lane turning right as well. He decided that he would merge like a zip, but aggressively between the towing car and the towed car. This wasn’t going to be successful anyway he tried it, aggressive or not. The towee saw what was happening and alerted Mr. Moron the only way possible with a short peep on his horn.

Well that just set Mr Moron off. His arm changed from hanging down along side the door to reaching inside for a steel bar and then brandishing it outside the car and waving it at the towee as he moved off down the road in front of him. Hos driving went from aggressive to down right dangerous as he tried to intimidate with the vehicle and threaten with the iron bar. They talk about being distracted by cellphones, I reckon Steven Joyce should look at banning iron bars from cars too.

It was at this point that  I feared that the towee, who had a body like a half sucked throatie was going to be smashed all to hell by Mr. Moron and his thug mate who was making fists at the towee. There was very little the towee could have done about all this too I might add.

Anyway, thinking and all in street brawl was about to erupt if these guys stopped I dialed *555. By this time all of us has proceeded down Reagan Road and were now in Preston Road, Otara. This is a serious hard hat area. I mean serious, and about to get more serious.

The Police answered promptly and after explaining what was happening and getting the rego of Mr. Moron asked me to stay on the line and follow and let them know what was happening until they could get someone there.

The towee and tower finally decided to pull over, actually in the safest place along Preston Road there is and as soon as was practicalbe. I certainly can’t fault their driving in any way. They were observant and courteous in their towing manner. It was only the f*ckwitted-ness of Mr. moron that was causing any angst.

mr. Moron pulled to a stop beside the towee and threatened him again with his burly arms brandishing the steel bar and then roared off down Preston Road nearly bowling a pedestrian on a crossing. Now walking across Preston Road is dangerous at the best of times but walking across on a pedestrian crossing is just making it easier for people like Mr. Moron. I informed the *555 people of progress.

Mr. Moron proceeded up Preston Road until he turned left onto East Tamaki Road, Otara it is about now he realised I was following him and he started brandishing the steel bar at me. I thought discretion was the better part of valour and informed Police operations that as he turned off onto Hills Road that I was not going to follow him. If Preston Road is hard hat then Hills Road is Pike River.

At this time Vodafone let the team down and the call dropped. 2 minutes later though *555 rang me back for two reasons. To see if I was alright and to advise that they were about to apprehend Mr. Moron and could I attend to give a statement. Int he time it took for me to turn around on East Tamaki Road and drive to the end of Hills Road was less than 5 minutes. In that time no less than 5 police cars, two plain clothes had arrived and captured Mr. Moron who was sitting on his driveway looking very circumspect.

I spoke to a constable and gave my statement then another police officer arrived and asked me to identify the steel bar that he now had in his hand.

This whole sequence occurred in less time than it has taken me to type it. From the moment I rang *555 till the time they nailed Mr. Moron was less than 5 minutes from beginning to end. To say that I am impressed with  service the and diligence of the officer involved including the *555 operators, I dealt with two of them, who seamlessly handed the calls across between them, would be an extreme understatement.

Who ever was the genius who invented the *555 system they should be given an OBE or something because the system works brilliantly. If I was Judith Collins I would seriously look at ditching the rooted 111 system and expand the *555 system. I was genuinely surprised at how quickly the Police reacted to this developing situation. If it had come to fisticuffs and a bludgeoning then I’m sure that even though the towee would have got a beating it would have been short lived due to the prompt actions of the Police involved.  Well done Police and *555.

Meanwhile Mr. Moron was arrested as I understand it. Not sure what he was charged with but he was arrested at the very least for being a cock and a silly bastard.

Last night was the sec­ond meet the can­di­dates meet­ing. As expected all candidates presented better with the biggest improvement coming from Aaron Bhatnagar, who spoke a lot better and more clearly than his first outing. Both he and Jami-lee Ross showed their political up-bringing in answering the policy focused questions far better than Maggie Barry who has, at best, a helicopter view of National party policy.

Some of the candidates are forgetting that although Botany is a wealthy seat, the older ones are often tradespeople and self-employed who left school early themselves. The word I have heard is that many delegates were disappointed to see silly dirty mudslinging brought into their electorate. It’s a pity too, because it is likely to have hurt the candidate it was designed to assist.

The Herald thinks it is a two horse race:

The National nomination for Botany looks to be down to a two-horse race between former broadcaster Maggie Barry and young Auckland councillor Jami-Lee Ross.

Matthew Hooton also comments:

Right-leaning political commentator Matthew Hooton this week said he believed it was a two-horse race between Ms Barry, 51, and Mr Ross, 25.

Hooton said on Radio NZ that Mr Ross had the advantage of being young and could bring voters to National who may not have voted for them before.

Gardening guru Ms Barry, who had conservation credentials and had appeared in advertisements for hearing aids, could be competition for New Zealand First leader Winston Peters in attracting older voters.

“If she does win that Botany election … she will be able to hit that Grey Power circuit, the sort of areas where National is sometimes weak,” said Hooton.

Current stock prices are:

Jami-Lee Ross to win selec­tion: Price: $0.61 Probability: 61.5%

Mag­gie Barry to win selec­tion: Price: $0.23 Probability: 23.2%

Aaron Bhat­na­gar to win selec­tion: Price: $0.16 Probability: 15.9%

Ed Saafi to win selec­tion: Price: $0.01 Probability: 1.1%

Dar­ren Gedge to win selec­tion: Price: $0.01 Probability: 1.1%