Posts by Matthew Poole
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I'll contribute another very readable article where a couple of economists answer some questions about the market interventions of the last few days. Very interesting.
Lehman Bros is the largest bankruptcy in US (and thus quite likely world) history, given their USD600m in pre-filing assets. The previous record was WorldCom, at a measly USD100m. Another interesting fact is that the asset-base of Fannie and Freddie is in excess of USD5 trillion. Yes, with a t! Seems that it wasn't just the Wall St part of the finance industry that took good advantage of nearly non-existent oversight.
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And I wish in our local context that people remembered ACT and their acolytes (including those in other parties) are the radical right, not conservatives.
Extreme fiscal conservatives, social liberals (except when it comes to individual rights for furriners). That's Act, anyway. National are purportedly social and fiscal conservatives, though it seems to be pretty nebulous.
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Thanks a mil Mr Poole; "bitching" and "pissy" for what I thought was genuine concern.
I get annoyed when people complain that laws that still require judicial oversight, and in the case of the TSA go so far as to require the Solicitor General's acquiescence (which, as we saw, isn't just a rubber stamp), are trampling on liberties. They're not, and can't, because the haven't put all the power with the police. If the TSA tramples on liberties, then the judiciary aren't doing a sufficient job of scrutinising applications for warrants, because the TSA doesn't lower the standards for getting one. It's an irrational complaint to say that a law with oversight somehow tramples liberties, unless you're saying that judges are trampling on liberties too.
Trampling liberties is removing the judiciary from the equation, handing the entirety of the decision-making to a police officer who's got a distinctly vested interest in the proceedings. Judges are there to see justice done, that is all. We've seen from the National Security Letters bullshit in the US what happens when you give cops the power to authorise their own information-gathering escapades.
Alternatively, any law that gives the police any investigative power is trampling on liberties. Which may be a valid point, but if that's the case then we may as well abolish criminal law entirely, disband the police, and revert to law of the jungle.
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For those of you bitching about how the TSA tramples on rights, it still requires that the police get a warrant. It imposes judicial oversight, and also demands that leave be sought from the Solicitor General before charges can be laid. That is how checks-and-balances work. A law tramples on rights when it does away with those measures, which the TSA doesn't do.
If you want to get all pissy, get worked up about the new surveillance bill that's before the house. The fuckwittedness that is the USA PATRIOT Act (it's an acronym, not the word Patriot) has finally made its way to our shores, it seems, though at least the police can't demand your bank and library records without going through a judge. Yet.
The TSA requires oversight of the police. There are provisions to mitigate against its misuse. No such protections exist in the new bill, and that is a far, far scarier proposition. -
First, the police obviously were able to act with some degree of discretion, as was shown by their decision to bypass their own local liaison people in the Urewera.
I know Russell wants this line of discussion shut down, but this point needs a response.
The cops will almost always bypass local officers when setting up an operation like this. They may or may not involve them in the planning, but they certainly won't involve them in the execution. Once the operation is over those officers have to remain in the area and carry out their duties, and that ability could be hopelessly compromised if they're seen to be acting against the local community.
A good example was the "body snatching" case down on the East Coast, where the police said that if they had to storm the marae to reclaim the body they'd do it with outside officers. -
the likely outcomes are that all the "virtuous" people who never look at porn will bitch mightily at the impact on service; and the huge percentage of people who do look at porn will be demanding they be taken off any filter list, thus rendering it effectively useless.
And the two groups will be one-and-the same in their bitching about speed, because even when you're off the filter list the necessity to pass through the filtering system still impacts traffic flow. I seriously doubt that ISPs will maintain two full networks, one for the virtuous and one for the vile, but that's what it'll take to give non-filtered users an unimpacted internet experience. The expense of separating traffic would be gargantuan, so it's just not going to happen.
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MikeE - you also seem to conveniently forget about all the extra "user-pay" charges that households would be burdened with.
And that's where their numbers just don't make sense. If Act cut income tax to zero, the average household would be most of the way to that $500/week. But, they'd have to fork out inordinate sums of money to afford things that are currently subsidised, if not outright funded, by central gummint: Healthcare, education, roading, domestic security (the cops don't come cheap)... So they're better-off to the tune of their current income tax bill, but much worse off overall because they're now saddled with the user-pays ideology of Roger's disciples.
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The MP who makes me loathe to vote Greens is Keith Locke. I consider the man to be the worst kind of oxygen thief. I admire his willingness to stand up for his principles, but after the Wallace shooting I just cannot respect him.
Sadly he's also the only MP who's spoken out against the evil rewrite of the Immigration Act, and that draft law is sufficiently sickening that I'm very nearly prepared to get over disliking Locke for the duration of my trip to the polling booth. -
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
So, what they're saying is that Palin is just King Dick the Second, though with a less-intellectually absent POTUS as the figurehead. When you've got Cheney arguing that VPOTUS is some kind of forth arm of the Government, and thus outside all the ordinary checks-and-balances processes that attend the other three arms, you've got to be concerned when his potential replacement appears to be poured from almost the same mould (she does have girl bits, after all).
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Act's numbers are fishy. According to Statistics NZ (whose numbers I'm inclined to trust), average household income for the '06/'07 year was a shade under $68k. That works out to $1,308 per week, which I assume is a gross figure rather than a net one. Tax on $68k works out to a bit under $18k, so for convenience we'll say that net average household income is $50k, or $962/week.
Somehow we're expected to believe that households will be better off to the tune of over half their net income, taking them to a position better than their gross income? I smell a Tui billboard coming!