DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Maori, Megatron and the Money-go-round

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath takes his regularly irreverent look at some of the past week’s headlines.

1. Key Under Pressure On Tobacco Price Hike - The Maori Party, brown wing of the Nicotine National Socialists, want to hurt the people they purport to represent via another increase in taxes on cigarettes. They also want a select committee to “bring these bastards from the tobacco companies out in the open.” Never mind that until the 1970s these same “bastards” used to provide New Zealanders with jobs. Never mind that many people still enjoy a smoke without hurting anyone else.
    Tariana Turia needn’t worry – although the Sunday Star Times article I’ve linked to claims the Key administration has an aversion to moves that could be seen as “nanny state,” John-Boy’s government is steaming ahead with an Emission Trading Scam and a capital gains tax (profit is such a filthy word, John - stamp it out as fast as you can).
    Tariana is fuming however that tobacco companies dropped their prices (as a lot of businesses do in a time of recession), and wants to punish them for it. One of ASH’s Obergruppenfuhrers, Ben Youdan, admits upping taxes would be a “revenue-booster” for the government. Thank you for your honesty, Ben. That’s what sin taxes are all about – stopping people enjoying themselves while gouging consumers. ASH, the Maori Party and John-Boy are a bunch of fucking morons. Don’t they realise that if Joe Average can’t afford to buy cigarettes legally, he will grow his own, or (more likely) buy some from a private “black” market source (which, of course, is illegal). And who will supply this contraband tobacco? Why, the same lovely people that supply people of all ages with cannabis, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs. The gangs. That’s it!
    Tariana must be gunning for the gang vote in 2011.

2. One in Six Now Born Into Poverty – The NZ Council of Christian Social Services delivers some chilling statistics – 20,000 more children on the welfare rolls over the past year; waiting lists for food parcels; families disintegrating under financial stress. One in six children now born into “poverty.” Unemployment trebling in the past year.
    John-Boy has the power to reverse these alarming trends, liberate the poor from welfare addiction and help them into jobs. Do it now, John: abolish GST, a tax that unfairly hits the poor hardest; make the first $50,000 of income tax-free (that way you could scrap Welfare for Families, the Labour Party’s ploy to lead middle class people to the trough and invite them to drink their own blood until they beome addicted to it); and end minimum wage laws. In other words, economic deregulation – as per Libertarianz Party policies from the 2008 election. Feel free, John – steal our ideas, we don’t mind.
    Those children who are not yet sucked into the public welfare system’s vortex of despair and misery may one day thank you for it.

3. Hide: The Minister For Constitutional Change – What a disappointment Rodney Hide has been since he and his party joined the government benches. Supercity – one noose for the people of Auckland. Instead of scaling down and strangling the powers of the existing Auckland local bodies, Rodney Hide creates a bigger and more dangerous monster - Megatron, which will crush any resistance from ratepayers as it chews up their money.
    For 2010, Rodney proposes a Taxpayer’s Rights Bill – tying government spending increases to the rate of inflation and population increases – presumably the two multiplied together. Not cutting taxes on people who own real estate, but guaranteeing to increase these taxes. A Taxpayer’s Rights Bill is akin to a Rape Victim’s Rights Bill that doesn’t prosecute the rapist, but promises him a bigger and better violation next time.
     If this is the best ACT can do, they are doomed in 2011. Rodney, you are on a suicide mission. From the ACT website, among the first four ACT “plans” are cutting government waste, reducing taxes, limiting the scope of local government and reducing bureaucracy. How the hell do Megatron and the Tax-Rape Victims Rights Bill achieve the above?
    For the first time - and I never thought I would do this - I am publicly calling for Rodney Hide’s replacement as leader of ACT. It is disappointing to see Rodney abandon principles the Libertarianz Party have always espoused, but from which ACT have departed under their current leader.

4. Public money spent on shopping – shades of Tuku Morgan, but worse; chief parasite at the Hutt Valley Youth Health Trust (Vibe) spent $21,000 on clothes about which she initially lied, saying they were for clients to wear to job interviews. Not only that, but her staff paid their children $70 an hour as cleaners. Not only that, but large wads of taxpayer money were transferred electronically (i.e. stolen) and placed into accounts belonging to the said parasite and her friend. And not only that, but money already extorted from productive people by the IRD, then handed on to bureaucrats and finally to Vibe, was not returned to the IRD fast enough by Vibe, who failed to file a declaration (“tax return”) in order to allow the IRD to estimate how much pre-stolen money they should re-steal from Vibe. The result: penalties for filing late tax returns, so that even more pre-stolen money ended up being re-stolen.
    Oh well, I guess the IRD were going to get it all eventually, anyway. Meanwhile, the chief parasite and her co-parasites were meeting in cafes, attending gyms, showering each other with gifts and throwing parties, with the money that Bob Russell (IRD’s head bloodsucker) took from you and I because we were too successful. Chief parasite’s husband says she has been “punished enough”. Apparently, “she was just hung out to dry by the board,” poor darling. Am I the only one who thinks this conniving, thieving scumbag should be sacked immediately, her name and photo circulated to every private employer in the country, and be forced to pay back every cent she stole, plus interest?                                   

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath