Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Well I can't argue with that logic. Perhaps Sensing Murder could do a Clinton Impeachment edition :) It is a fascinating show.
Heh. I watched one a couple of weeks ago because of a family connection. Apparently the police officer who is in charge of the case now made two comments. 1. How the hell did they figure all that out without being told? 2. The information that was provided was next to useless for the police. They got given a name, but no judge is going to give a search warrant based on a name given by a psychic, so unless the offender watches the show and decides to give themselves up...
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Arguably, a pledge card (which can certainly be funded by Parliamentary Services) from a party in Parliament falls within the exemption (so isn't included in the $2.4m cap - effectively making the limit much higher for parties in Parliament), but a pledge card from a Party outside Parliament trying to get in cannot - so has to be included in that party's spending limit.
This is actually the main thing that annoys me about our electoral finance laws. That parliamentary services ends up paying for things that are blatantly election material. If we're going to have taxpayers funding political parties for election spending, OK, lets have that debate, until then, it'd be nice if we didn't actually pay for it, and the similar stuff that National, and whoever else spits out.
Good to see that the electoral finance laws left that alone though. Love it when political parties can argue over megaphones and spending limits, but still sit happily together and ignore the stuff that benefits them all equally!
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It's just not good enough to position yourself as the only person who can stand up against the Republican smear machine, and then have your own campaign workers caught taking a leaf out of the Rove play book. It just lays you open to questions about whether you can run a country when you can't even keep your primary workers in line. At worse, you're raising the perception that you're a hypocrite who doesn't even have the guts to sling your own dirt, but will tacitly condone expendable proxies doing it instead.
Yes true. But a year ago Hilary's organisation probably consisted of a dozen staff. Now it probably consists of hundreds, with thousands more volunteers, and if she wins the nomination then staff is going to be thousands, and volunteers is probably going to make... I dunno. six figures?
That sort of quick growth when she's not actually running the campaign - there'll be a campaign manager somewhere who actually employs these people. Just feels like she can't always be responsible for what one flunky that she's possibly never met did in forwarding an email, and her response - kicking them out of her organisation - is the appropriate response. If bosses were held completely accountable for every screwup that happens below them, then no one is going to last long as a boss, particularly in politics.
Of course, if she's encouraging that sort of dirt slinging, then as you note, it should stick all over her. And it wouldn't surprise me if she has, her campaign against Obama certainly seems to be trying to fling as much mud as possible
But I'm with you on Obama/Clinton. My wish is that politicians inspire me, primarily from the left, but I'd appreciate the right doing it as well on occasion, which doesn't happen very often, certainly not in America. I haven't seen much of him, but the little I have he's heading that way.
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Bill English, on the other hand, took part in "the Fight for Life" and everybody thought it either cool or pathetic. Nobody, to my knowledge, came out and said he was promoting violence but for him and his cohorts to vilify Mallard was just another Govt. beat up.
I said it! Perhaps I didn't say it to you, but I think 'Fight for life' is (was now?) a terrible fundraiser - not just for English to be involved in, but every All Black and rugby league player etc. The whole raising money for youth suicide by getting a bunch of people together to watch two men beat each other up... yup.
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And I am more than happy with that. If you want to run a huge million dollar campaign arguing for a 63% tax rate on business and outlining all the lovely reasons why it's such a great idea then you can. If you slap "oh and vote Labour coz they agree with me" on the end of that then you have just written an ad for a political party, a party that has existing spending limits on advertising for itself.
This has to be covered if you're serious about limiting electoral finance. I don't know how, or if the current Act helps (I really lost track about 5 "this is annoying and boring!"s ago).
Otherwise you'll have National spending their 2 million dollars, and the "Coalition of people who say exactly the same things as National but never actually say 'Vote National', but who use the same branding and images of party leaders etc" spending their 20 million. Or whatever. You might as well not limit electoral finance at all.
There's a whole West Wing episode about 'soft money'. And if it was on West Wing it must be accurate!
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When you get right down to it, WTF were these people thinking forwarding a nasty smear against an opponent, period? Domestically, if I was National's campaign director I'd be making it pretty damn clear that nobody connected with the campaign should be forwarding anything about an opposing candidate to anyone I wouldn't be happy to see leading the six o'clock news. Its only as complicated as you want to make it, IMO.
I think that's true if you're the campaign director. But in a dogfight like the Democratic primaries are turning out to be, to low/medium level campaign staffers who are slogging it away and probably passionately believe in their 'guy' and probably can't see that forest for the trees.
I bet there's a heap of jokes and stories and whatnot going around most political campaign headquarters around the world, which you wouldn't want getting out in the public domain. Their problem is probably using email which is a publishable source rather than 'gossip over a late night beer' which would end up as background at best to a story.
And obviously they paid the price for it.
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I think saying they should have fucked off and formed a political party is a pretty coarse and frankly stupid conception of what being an engaged citizen is.
Note, Keith said 'third party', not 'political party'. You've tangled up his later comments on 'you could just form a political party' with his smackdown of Rodney Hide which was that the abolitionists would have to register as a third party. I think Keith's point still stands, which is "what would be different for the abolitionist movement if the EFB had been in force, apart from having to register and fill in the forms?"
Personally I think comparisons between abolitionist movements of a few centuries ago, and a modern NZ political parties are a bit idiotic. Not for the reasons that Keith has outlined, but because the political world was incredibly different back then.
It's about as useful a comparison as jumping up and saying "ooh! Wouldn't have happened in the democracy of Ancient Greece!". Yup. But after the debate, Rodney Hide also doesn't head off with the National Party caucus to fondle some pretty young slave boys either, so we're making progress.
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why does the price of Margerine rise along with the price of Butter?
Same reason that war in the Middle East has meant that oil from everywhere else in the world has gone up in price.
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A Flying Nun musician! (er, I'll get me coat...).
I've changed my mind. Russell can stay. Clearly Grant is the weakest link.
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Because he was a man on the net. And they're all creeps and pervs.
Dammit Russell. You bring in a new token woman and she's onto us already. You're getting voted off the island dude.