Selwyn Pellett

Labour follows closely behind the UK in its policy making. In the UK they have the Fabian Society and a branch has been formed here in New Zealand for hard core Labour lefties.

Selwyn Pellett, Bernard Hickey and David Parker et al are all either members or contributors of the Fabians in New Zealand. One wonders if they will take the lead of the UK and implement a policy like that proposed over there…raising taxes off of the back of those filthy rich pensioners?

Pensioners’ taxes should increase, their benefits be cut, and a tax on property wealth should be introduced in order to share the pain of austerity with today’s hard-up workers, a think-tank said today.

The income gap between pensioners and workers has shrunk massively in the last few decades, so taxes should be raised on those in retirement, the Fabian Society said.

Middle-income working households enjoyed an income 93 per cent above that of middle-income retired households when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, but that figure is now 37 per cent.

High-levels of home ownership among older people means the older generation are in effect far better off, as middle-income workers’ wages now stagnate and they cannot afford to buy a home.  Read more »

How come we haven’t heard Labour coming out threatening to intervene (as they did in the Haier takeover)?

Given that business and Pellett have trousered millions in Government subsidies you’d think they’d be very vocal.

So is their silence because :

Matthew Hooton examines the lunacy of Labour and the Greens:

Labour, the Greens and their cheerleaders are delirious about work by staffers at the International Monetary Fund.

Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy was written in 2010 by French and Italian nationals Olivier Blanchard, Giovanni De’Ariccia and Paolo Mauro. Professor Blanchard has followed it up with Monetary Policy in the Wake of the Crisis.

The work is being cited by Labour’s David Parker and the Green’s Russel Norman as justifying all sorts of nonsense, including Dr Norman’s loony idea of printing money despite the official cash rate being above zero.

Left-wing cheerleaders Selwyn Pallett [sic], John Walley and Rod Oram have picked up the theme at events like the EPMU’s “crisis” summit.

Profound changes, we’re told, are needed to New Zealand’s monetary and wider economic policy. Funnily enough, their proposals would transfer wealth to Mr Pallett [sic] and Mr Walley from savers, consumers, taxpayers and the EPMU’s lower-paid workers.

Selwyn Pellett just absolutely loves corporate welfare.

On the role of government, Professor Blanchard argues for much tighter fiscal policy in good times, saying that when economic growth returns, as it has in New Zealand, countries must reduce their debt-to-GDP ratios rather than increase spending or cut tax.

The left has been strangely silent about that.

He also thinks legislators should consider giving central banks additional monetary tools, a debate which is not new. Even Don Brash has floated ideas such as the Reserve Bank being able to impose a mortgage rate levy, or vary GST or petrol taxes at the margins.

Professor Blanchard is particularly keen to debate how monetary and regulatory policy could be better combined. In leading that debate, he acknowledges the risk that too many tools and too many interventions could be distortionary and harmful.

He worries that, if central banks started being in charge of too many instruments, they would then be responsible for picking favourites among different sectors of the economy (say, Mr Pallett [sic] and Mr Walley over savers and consumers).

That, in turn, would raise questions of whether or not they could or should continue to be independent from politicians.

Labour politicians are even signalling that they want control over even private companies like Fisher & Paykel and a say over their own affairs when seeking capital or even to sell.

It is a left wing shibboleth that big money involved in politics is evil….unless of course it is their big money:

“What’s going on,” she said, “is you have billionaires who are trying to buy this election because they understand that Gov. Romney will put in place policies that put more dollars into their pockets while taking dollars out of the middle class. And you have contributors to President Obama’s campaign who are doing it because they want to grow the economy for everyone in a fair and equitable way.”

Note carefully what is being asserted here. It’s not just that Democratic ideas are morally superior to Republican ones or that Barack Obama is a better president, or a better man, than Mitt Romney or would be, or is. Rather, the claim is that whereas billionaires who support Romney are greedy and selfish, those who back Obama are altruistic–or, to the extent they have a selfish motive, it is a relatively benign one, a simple desire to be in the presence of the Dear Leader.

This is exactly the same premise that people like Selwyn Pellett subscribe to. Receivers of extensive corporate welfare, they think they are best placed to sanctimoniously tell the rest of us how virtuous they are.

It’s a leftist cliché that money corrupts politics. These leftists, however, believe that theirpolitics somehow purifies money–that writing a check to Obama for America is an act of moral money-laundering.

Heh, I just bet Selwyn Pellett adopts that phrase and gets Bernard Hickey to start using it with his new venture.

As I told you the other day, Bernard Hickey has split from interest.co.nz and is starting up his own journalism.org.nz. No problems with this, everyone seems to have worked it out.

Bernard even jumped on Red Radio and told us Selwyn Pellett was helping him out.

He’s asked for feedback on how much people will pay to read his work.

Comment of the week

Perhaps Bernard’s first story could be how much taxpayer funding Selwyn Pellett has been receiving in corporate welfare over the years?  And the rorts that have gone on for R&D and “high tech” funding?

Another comment has raised a roofist sort of argument.

After extensive publicity this week I see numbers have slightly risen in his begging poll to 259 responders.

Still, it is quite clear that Selwyn has loaned his business/marketing trainee/PA Stacey Riordan to the site to run its admin and probably design the site given it looks a lot like hers.

So how much of journalism.org.nz will be driven by Labour funder and “critical friend” Selwyn Pellett?  And how can they say they are a “new” sort of thing when they too appear backed by a rich, politically motivated and opinionated friend of a political party?

Rob Hosking at NBR has brought some sanity to the “high dollar’ debate that Bernard Hickey along with Selwyn Pellett and his corporate welfare gang, seem to talk about quietly and then loudly among themselves.  Rob has dissected the issues  and provided reasons that Hick-think is so very very wrong for the New Zealand economy.

Rob looks at the enormity of our paddle pond v the world’s markets on US QE measures.

Rob goes one further

Selwyn Pellett is one of Labour’s “critical friends” and boy is he being critical:

@CactusKate2 Left and Right is 2 simple. It removes options. We know we need CGT, Lift Super Age & Axe Interest Free Student Loans.

— Selwyn Pellett (@SelwynPellett) March 19, 2012

I’m not sure this will go down too well with the cloth cap pinkos, especially the student bludger class.

Cactus Kate schools the  corporate benny on the realities of politics:

@SelwynPellett really? most Labour members wd think axing int free student loans is good. And CGT polled 27% at election.

— Cactus Kate (@CactusKate2) March 19, 2012

I predict that Selwyn Pellett will be an absolute pain in the arse for Labour’s committee, mainly because he thinks aloud on Twitter. Happy days.

Labour is looking to the past in their review for the future:

The Labour Party has called on several friendly external advisers to help with a major review of its organisation, including US-based academic Rob Salmond and technology businessman Selwyn Pellett.

Labour leader David Shearer and President Moira Coatsworth set out the scope of a review of the party organisation and its processes yesterday – including its membership structure, list ranking process and party involvement in policy formulation.

Mr Salmond and Mr Pellett are both on an advisory group, called “critical friends,” which Ms Coatsworth said would provide critical advice and input to the review.

Mr Pellett, chief executive of Imarda and co-founder of Endace, has spoken at Labour conferences about economic reform and supported the party. However, he was critical of Labour before the 2008 election, saying then leader Phil Goff should step down.

Other “critical friends” included current MP Parekura Horomia, former MPs Margaret Wilson and Tim Barnett and former British Labour MP Bryan Gould.

Ahhh a corporate beneficiary, failed MPs, two academics, a pie eater….the prospects of any dynamic suggestions seems dim.

Ms Coatsworth said Labour’s membership was currently in the mid 50,000s but much of that was made up of affiliated union membership.

The review will be led by another team, who will consult and meet with members. That group includes current MP Nanaia Mahuta, former MP Rick Barker, Ruth Chapman and Mark Hutchinson.

Mr Horomia and Ms Mahuta are the only current caucus members with formal roles in the review.

Labour has nowhere near 50,000 members. I’d like to see the membership forms from them. This is nothing less than a fraud by counting affiliate memberships. Labour should move to get rid of affiliates, if they don;t then the government should as part of the electoral law review that always follows elections look at restricting donations and membership of politicals parties to natural persons only.

I just hope that Labour has put aside plenty of funds to fund Parekura Horomia and Nanaia Mahuta’s penchant for pies.

On the one hand we have Trevor Mallard and various other attention seeking morons wanting to ban Chinese ostensibly, but foreigners in general, from owning land, and at the same time forbid Kiwi owners from digging up or enjoying the resources that they already own. Leaving with little option other than tos ell to the highest bidder.

And in Australia, one decidedly plain woman…ok ugly…with her sale of shares to Posco, a Korean company, has cemented her place as Australia’s richest person and is closing in on the title of the world’s richest woman.

If she lived in New Zealand we would have had Trevor Mallard try and spike the deal, Bernard Hickey decrying the deal, Gareth Morgan insisting she pay capital gains tax, never mind Australia has one, and he refuses to pay the same and Selwyn Pellett telling us all that she should set up a high tech fund to provide massive corporate welfare for him and his mates so they can enter tame competitions and call themselves entrepreneurs.

So while Australians enjoy their wealth garnered from mining and other magnificent feats of engineering, here in New Zealand we are moaning about some clapped out farms of no real consequence on marginal land that without the cows and the associated Fonterra shares is pretty much worthless.

What’s got me buggered is this news from years ago:

The one confusing factor is that of lactose intolerance. The majority of Chinese adults suffer a deficiency of lactose, the enzyme needed to break down the lactose in milk and the common trigger for lactose intolerance.

Wait until the petite Chinese women realise that you don’t get a Kiwi women’s arse without eating mountains of dairy.

hat tip Heine

People like Phil Goff, Gareth Morgan and Selwyn Pellett like to tell everyone that the rich need to pay higher taxes. That higher taxes will solve all our problems. The thing is they arrange and structure themselves so that they don’t practice what they preach.

The next time Phil Goff talks about the wealthy paying more taxes why don’t reporters ask him if he would voluntarily do so if National won the election and kept tax rates the same.

In the US taxpayers can voluntarily pay more tax by filling out a simple form. Watch what happens when someone goes up to the US equivalent of Selwyn Pellett and asks them to pay more taxes.

Two dozen “patriotic millionaires” traveled to the national’s capital on Wednesday to demand that Congress raise taxes on wealthy Americans.

The Daily Caller attended their press conference with an iPad, which displayed the Treasury Department’s donation page, to find out if any of the “patriotic millionaires” were willing to put their money where their mouth is.