As HL Mencken observed, elections are an advance auction of stolen goods. In New zealand, the auction is paid for by the taxpayer.
Parties are not allowed to use their own money for electronic advertising during the election period, so the taxpayer has to be fleeced in order to be made aware of the election bribes on offer. The distribution of that funding for the forthcoming election has been announced by the Electoral Commission.
Labour and National recieve $1.1 and $0.9 million respectively; ACT, NZF, UF and Greens $200k; Maori Party $125k; Progressive Party $75k; Alliance, CHP, Destiny and Libertarianz $20k each; and a truck-load of minor parties each getting a $10k bone.
AS you can expect, some people are happier than others at the state's generosity. DPF and related comments here. The Greens' frog croaks unhappily here. Greg Stephens comments here, Winston bleats here and Rodney Hide here.
TV time has been allocated for all but the minor parties. Libertarianz has received one minute of TV time; Labour and National 12 minutes each (and to top this up Labour also have the taxpaid promotion of their Working for Families bribe).
To bribe people with their own money! What could be more ingenious?
Full story here.
[UPDATE: Winston's bleating has been removed from Scoop. He now whinges here, and National respond here. ]
1 comment:
Andrei: Don't think there is any principles here. They'll take the $20000 like they took the money last time. They'll pretend it has something to do with the state stopping them from spending their own funds. Well, heres an easy way for them to prove it. They raise their own funds (a paltry amount by anyones standards) and then put that amount out to the public. They then only take the same amount from the govt. (they'll take the full amount since they are addicted to this welfare its almost the only funding they have). The rest from the state they give back. The amount they raised privately they then donate to private charity that is doing good work. This way they are only technically spending what they actually raised themselves and they aren't taking one extra dime of stolen money from the taxpayers. Of course they won't do this. They are addicted to welfare like most welfare addicts.
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