O'Sullivan on Jones

Fran O'Sullivan has asked some hard question of #Labour'sGotTalent contestant Shane Jones in her Herald column this morning. They are certainly harder questions than his ex-officio PR team of Messrs Garner, Gower and Espiner have asked to date.

And in fact Ms O'Sullivan's piece is such a compelling piece of reading that we are reproducing it in full; we will save our comments for the end, rather than interspersing them; here 'tis:

Why doesn't earthy Shane Jones just come out and say it? "I'm not just another Labour 'soft cock'."
"I'm for big, bold economic policies to grow the economy"; "I'm against hitting 'rich pricks' with new taxes (after all some of my best friends are just that);" "I want new mines in Northland and gas fields in Taranaki - Labour's communist mates in the Greens don't know how to promote jobs ..." You get the drift?
All right, I apologise for the tasteless introduction, but listening to, watching and reading Shane Jones interviews can do that to a "gelding" (as we women are in the Jones lexicon), you know.
Those who know the unvarnished Jones find the political snow job he is currently orchestrating during his extended bromance with TV3 political editor Patrick Gower and 3rd Degree's Guyon Espiner andDuncan Garner is more than simply comical.
None of these journalists have faced Jones with anything even vaguely like the third degree. It's just been roll cameras; lap up the latest smutty porn-related allusions (such as Jones' comment "doing things in a soft fashion has never been really a failing of mine" on Wednesday night's road trip with Espiner to the North) and give the Labour leadership contender the kind of free ride political journalists sometimes do when the politician in question has a reputation for being a prime source.

The public now knows the open secret in political circles that Jones skipped out on his wife and seven kids for his "beauty queen".
But there was no real third degree from Espiner on how his family might have felt at being left behind to bear the embarrassment of him being publicly exposed for using his ministerial credit card to book porn movies, while Jones wandered off into the sunset.
This was disappointing as Espiner has a hard-won journalistic reputation.
Those of us who appreciate real television current affairs tune in to his Wednesday night programme to escape the mindless dross served up by TVNZ's 7 Sharp. But this week's effort did not cut it.
Jones deserves to be strongly grilled on where he really sits on major economic issues facing New Zealand. After all the chances are he will end up with a top slot on Labour's front bench and a prime shadow portfolio as a kiss-off if he doesn't win the leadership race against David Cunliffe and Grant Robertson.
Before politics, he held senior public sector roles in the Ministry for the Environment and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. But he was best known for his chairmanship of the Waitangi Fisheries Commission (Te Ohu Kaimoana).
Yesterday's media carried reports on Jones' graphic allusions to what he plans to do to the Prime Minister: "I'm going to tie a bungy cord around a sensitive spot and then I'm going to get those callipers and cut them and then the mercenary of capitalism can suffer what he deserves - a dead cat bounce."
All said with nary a blush that Jones himself could have been described as just such a mercenary back in the day when Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark turned a blind eye while he collected $70,000 a year as chairman of Te Ohu Kaimoana, on top of the $130,000 he earned as a Labour MP and chairman of Parliament's finance and expenditure select committee.
Get under his skin and dig deep enough and the journalists might just expose Jones as a politician of contradictions and considerable subterfuge.
But right now he is simply "too good in the copy stakes" for that to happen.
I was intrigued at how some journalists bought the story that he was the hapless David Shearer's friend and loyal to the previous leader's bitter end. But anyone who had heard Jones morosely talk of his real feelings towards Shearer after the Labour leader stood him down during the Auditor-General investigation which touched on his previous ministerial dealings would have an entirely opposite perspective.
One area where Jones has considerable political utility for Labour is his relationship with NZ First's Winston Peters. Both politicians are social animals.
But New Zealand women? Like former Labour Cabinet minister John Tamihere with his slags against the "front-bums", he could do with exhibiting some respect.
This week he said that he had always found that was very popular with women.
"I've never been at the top of the hit parade with feminists. But the women I want to appeal to are the women that read the Woman's Weekly, not Germaine Greer."
A straw vote of New Zealand women would say different.

There are some fascinating insights in this piece. Despite the fact that David Shearer has endorsed Jones, the MP seems to he holding a grudge against his former leader for his treatment over the Bill Liu saga, from which Jones was lucky to emerge at all.

Jones' position on mining and drilling is at odds with Labour's official stance. A few weeks ago he and Andrew Little met with oil and gas people in Taranaki, and the reported messages coming out of that meeting were very different to what Labour and the Greens regularly recite in the House. Jones is pragmatic enough to see the wealth and jobs that have been created in Taranaki, and want that for elsewhere in New Zealand. That immediately sets him apart from Messrs Robertson and Cunliffe.

Mediaworks has certainly given Jones a soft run so far, and we suspect that they see it as a ratings winner for TV3 and RadioLive. They have certainly aligned themselves with the bloke from the far North than with either Cunliffe or Robertson. It was no surprise therefore that Jones did surprisingly well in last night's 3News poll.

Shane Jones would be a theatrical opponent for John Key, but we wonder how deep he goes beneath the surface. And that creates a dilemma for those voting on the Labour leadership. Jones may have the potential to draw people back to Labour, including Waitakere Man and his mates. But is he in it for the long haul, and do the rumours that he has a pretty cavalier approach to detail and long hours of work have any substance?

Fran O'Sullivan has done the right thing by asking the hard questions that others have not. And those "others" might want to reveal what their motives are in promoting Jones so unashamedly.

Do we really need SWAT teams for clean water violations?

Do we really need SWAT teams for clean water violations?

by digby

What in the hell?

Miners from the Chicken area -- a gold mining town of just 17 full-time residents and dozens of seasonal miners off the Taylor Highway, between Tok and the Canadian border -- said that during the third week of August they were surprised by groups of four to eight armed officers, who swarmed onto their mining claims with little or no warning.

The officers were armed and wearing body armor. They were part of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and were there to check for violations of section 404 of the Clean Water Act, according to several miners who were contacted by the group. Section 404 governs water discharges into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.

The task force’s methods are now being questioned by the miners as well as the Alaska congressional delegation.

“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say POLICE emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” said C.R. “Dick” Hammond, a Chicken gold miner who got a visit from the task force.

“How would you have felt?” Hammond asked. “You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have I done now?’”

Well, you can't blame them.

Yes, clean water violations are serious business. Except, you know, it's Alaska, not Lake Erie. And they had a method for dealing with these violations in the past that worked out pretty well:

Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door -- as they used to do -- and said they wanted to check the water.

But get this:

The EPA has refused to publicly explain why it used armed officers as part of what it called a “multi-jurisdictional” investigation of possible Clean Water Act violations in the area.

A conference call was held last week to address the investigation. On the line were members of the Alaska Congressional delegation, their staff, state officers, and the EPA. According to one Senate staffer, the federal agency said it decided to send in the task force armed and wearing body armor because of information it received from the Alaska State Troopers about “rampant drug and human trafficking going on in the area.”

The miners contacted by the task force were working in the area of the Fortymile National Wild and Scenic River. The federal designation, made in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, protects 32 miles between Chicken and Eagle, Alaska. It is a remote area, close to the Canadian border and the town of Boundary. The nearest city of any real size is Fairbanks, 140 miles to the northwest. It was unknown to everyone in the area that there is a rampant problem with drug and human traffickers.

This also came as news to the Alaska State Troopers, whom the EPA said supplied the information about drugs and human trafficking, and at least one U.S. senator.

“Their explanation -- that there are concerns within the area of rampant drug trafficking and human trafficking going on -- sounds wholly concocted to me,” said Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“The Alaska State Troopers did not advise the EPA that there was dangerous drug activity. We do not have evidence to suggest that is occurring,” said Trooper spokesperson Megan Peters.

Chicken Alaska as a rampant center of drug and human trafficking is hilarious:

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 115.4 square miles (299 km2), all of it land.

The only transportation to Chicken is a small local airstrip, as well as Alaska Route 5, the Taylor Highway. The highway is not maintained from mid-October through mid-March.

As of the census of 2000, there were 17 people, 6 households, and 4 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 0.1 people per square mile (0.1/km²). There were 21 housing units at an average density of 0.2 per square mile (0.1/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 100.00% White.

It may have doubled or tripled in size since then ...

Seriously, this is a case of a federal agency being given a bunch of para-military gear and the boys just having to play GI Joe with it. I'm generally a fan of the EPA and I'm all for keeping Alaska's water as clean as can be. But this is dangerous and insane behavior. They do not need a military style "environmental crimes task force" in the first place. And if they do then I think they should probably be spending their time dealing with the potential for massive oil spills not small family run gold mines in Chicken Alaska.

Oh and by the way;

Likins said the task force may have found one possible clean water violation at a mine near Boundary, very close to the Canadian border.

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Judgment Day for Labor

We've been to Australia several times this year. And wherever we've been, when we've talked to people about politics, they have been hanging out for today; the day of the Federal Election. And they've been hanging out for today because they want to bring an end to six years of appalling government.

The polls open in about three-and-a-half hours time as we type this. And it seems that the only question remaining now is over the margin of victory for the Coalition, and whether Labor will just get defeated, or whether Kevin Rudd's party will get annihilated.

The Sydney Morning Herald has details of the final round of polls:

Australians are preparing to sweep aside six years of Labor rule, installing Tony Abbott as the country's 28th prime minister in an electoral verdict leaving no room for doubt.
A swing of 4 per cent against Kevin Rudd's government threatens to strip the ALP of future stars as voters cast a harsh judgment on the party's internal divisions.
A poll shows electors will turn their backs on big-picture policies to price carbon, tax big miners, and build a first-class national broadband network, in favour of the smaller horizons of reduced debt, smaller government, and a new domestic-first focus.

The latest Age/Nielsen survey suggests 54 per cent of the nation's 14.7 million electors are embracing the Coalition.

Labor's primary vote has slumped to 33 per cent, with the Coalition on 46 per cent.
Primary support for Labor, and Mr Rudd's own popularity, are now as low or lower than they were in June 2010, suggesting the party that has twice changed prime ministers and torn itself apart in the search for votes is back where it started.
Mr Abbott has maintained his 7-point lead as the more trusted of the two leaders.

Other polls also point to a Coalition victory, but a slightly closer result. The final Morgan poll found the Coalition ahead after preferences by 53.5 per cent to 46.5 per cent, the Galaxy poll put it at 53-47, and the Essential poll found the Coalition leading 52-48.

 

Whilst the polls themselves make grim reading for Labor, that's not the worst of it; the carnage could be even worse; read on:

 

If applied uniformly across the nation, the 4 per cent swing would cost Labor 14 seats.
But strategists on both sides expect Labor's losses to be even higher, with as many as 25 seats falling into conservative hands.
That is because the national average is skewed by higher-than-average pro-Coalition swings in the big population states of Victoria (4 per cent) and NSW (5 per cent).
The poll of 1431 respondents was taken on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

We will be staying up tonight to watch TV coverage of events as they unfold. But barring some sort of miracle, Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister of Australia, and the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years will be consigned to the history books. And somehow, we doubt that history will be kind to the about-to-be-former Labor government and its leaders.

With a Wainuiomata-born wife, Tony Abbott is likely to be a far better friend to New Zealand than Kevin Rudd has been. Here's hoping that a new era of trans-Tasman co-operation is about to be born.

 

Tragic wastes on top of tragic wastes: why people are tired

Tragic wastes on top of tragic wastes

by digby

If you want to know why Americans are not exactly keen on starting another war, this surely plays a part in it:

According to today's numbers it is down a bit more from that graph. It's at 7.3%, with vast numbers having left the workforce because they can't find any work. This used to be considered a crisis.  Now, it's considered a success.

Krugman put this in context in his column today called "Years of tragic waste"

In a few days, we’ll reach the fifth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers — the moment when a recession, which was bad enough, turned into something much scarier. Suddenly, we were looking at the real possibility of economic catastrophe.

And the catastrophe came.

Wait, you say, what catastrophe? Weren’t people warning about a second Great Depression? And that didn’t happen, did it? Yes, they were, and no, it didn’t — although the Greeks, the Spaniards, and others might not agree about that second point. The important thing, however, is to realize that there are degrees of disaster, that you can have an immense failure of economic policy that falls short of producing total collapse. And the failure of policy these past five years has, in fact, been immense.

Some of that immensity can be measured in dollars and cents. Reasonable measures of the “output gap” over the past five years — the difference between the value of goods and services America could and should have produced and what it actually produced — run well over $2 trillion. That’s trillions of dollars of pure waste, which we will never get back.

Behind that financial waste lies an even more tragic waste of human potential. Before the financial crisis, 63 percent of adult Americans were employed; that number quickly plunged to less than 59 percent, and there it remains.

How did that happen? It wasn’t a mass outbreak of laziness, and right-wing claims that jobless Americans aren’t trying hard enough to find work because they’re living high on food stamps and unemployment benefits should be treated with the contempt they deserve. A bit of the decline in employment can be attributed to an aging population, but the rest reflects, as I said, an immense failure of economic policy.
[...]
Look, I know that as a political matter an adequate job-creation program was never a real possibility. And it’s not just the politicians who fell short: Many economists, instead of pointing the way toward a solution of the jobs crisis, became part of the problem, fueling exaggerated fears of inflation and debt.

Still, I think it’s important to realize how badly policy failed and continues to fail. Right now, Washington seems divided between Republicans who denounce any kind of government action — who insist that all the policies and programs that mitigated the crisis actually made it worse — and Obama loyalists who insist that they did a great job because the world didn’t totally melt down.

Obviously, the Obama people are less wrong than the Republicans. But, by any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure.

There are only so many "immense policy failures" (and I would certainly define the Iraq debacle as another one) that people can take in a few short years. It's too much.

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Is it really all about chemical weapons?

Is it really all about chemical weapons?

by digby

Chris Hayes interviewed John Kerry last night and you should watch it if you missed it. It was really good.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm just going to highlight one little exchange:

HAYES: Can you unilaterally declare that you’re not taking responsibility for a civil war when the rebels on the ground are going to see this American intervention as possibly a door opening to further intervention and that is going to affect the way they conduct themselves. 

KERRY: We have made it crystal clear to them. We make it crystal clear now in every statement that we have made, this action has nothing to do with engaging directly in Syria’s civil war on one side or the other. It has to do with enforcing a norm of international behavior that has protected people against chemical weapons. And it is one of the things — chemical, biological, nuclear warfare, we have decided as a world we are going to protect people against those weapons.

Oh, ok:

The Obama administration is considering a plan to use U.S. military trainers to help increase the capabilities of the Syrian rebels, a move that would greatly expand the CIA training now being done in Jordan, U.S. officials said Thursday. Any training would take place outside Syria, and one possible location would be Jordan. 

The officials, who declined to be identified, said discussions were continuing and came as the Obama administration prods Congress to authorize limited military strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government in retaliation for a deadly Aug. 21 chemical-weapons attack that killed more than 1,400 people. 

The proposal to use the U.S. military to train the rebels would answer the demands of some lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to do more to train and equip the Syrian opposition. President Obama in June decided to provide lethal aid to the rebels, but none of that assistance has arrived.

Also:

President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to deploy chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action. 

Obama ordered the expansion beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list. The strikes would be aimed at the military units that have stored and prepared the chemical weapons and carried out the attacks against Syrian rebels, military officials said.

It occurred to me this morning that despite the resistance of the American people and many in congress, I think virtually everyone accepts this "preserving the international norms" banning chemical weapons rationale (regardless of whether or not they believe it will lead to further escalation.) It's a testament to the trust people still have in the president that they believe him.

But it must be acknowledged that getting involved in the civil war, for which McCain and the right wing hawks have been lobbying for months, is certainly the neo-con approach ("real men go to Tehran --- but Damascus is good too".) And the realists in both parties have recommended arming the rebels for months. From all reports the president rejected that course and only decided to act as a result of the red line crossing. I have no reason to doubt those motives. But more cynical types might easily wonder if the administration has been looking for an excuse to get more involved and finally found it. At the very least it would appear that there's some negotiating going on to ensure certain hawkish votes in congress. And that's a worry.


Update:  Also note that Kerry said he and Hagel were against the Iraq war. They both voted for it. C'mon.

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The G20 leaders' statement, in relevant part

For those who haven't yet read the G20 leaders' statement today, here is the part that particularly interests us:

51. In a context of severe fiscal consolidation and social hardship, in many countries ensuring that all taxpayers pay their fair share of taxes is more than ever a priority. Tax avoidance, harmful practices and aggressive tax planning have to be tackled.

The growth of the digital economy also poses challenges for international taxation. We fully endorse the ambitious and comprehensive Action Plan – originated in the OECD – aimed at addressing base erosion and profit shifting with mechanism to enrich the Plan as appropriate. We welcome the establishment of the G20/OECD BEPS project and we encourage all interested countries to participate. Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created.

In order to minimize BEPS, we call on member countries to examine how our own domestic laws contribute to BEPS and to ensure that international and our own tax rules do not allow or encourage multinational enterprises to reduce overall taxes paid by artificially shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. We acknowledge that effective taxation of mobile income is one of the key challenges. We look forward to regular reporting on the development of proposals and recommendations to tackle the 15 issues identified in the Action Plan and commit to take the necessary individual and collective action with the paradigm of sovereignty taken into consideration.

51.    We commend the progress recently achieved in the area of tax transparency and we fully endorse the OECD proposal for a truly global model for multilateral and bilateral automatic exchange of information. Calling on all other jurisdictions to join us by the earliest possible date, we are committed to automatic exchange of information as the new global standard, which must ensure confidentiality and the proper use of information exchanged, and we fully support the OECD work with G20 countries aimed at presenting such a new single global standard for automatic exchange of information by February 2014 and to finalizing technical modalities of effective automatic exchange by mid-2014.

In parallel, we expect to begin to exchange information automatically on tax matters among G20 members by the end of 2015. We call on all countries to join the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters without further delay. We look forward to the practical and full implementation of the new standard on a global scale. We encourage the Global Forum to complete the allocation of comprehensive country ratings regarding the effective implementation of information exchange upon request and ensure that the implementation of the standards are monitored on a continuous basis. We urge all jurisdictions to address the Global Forum recommendations in particular those 14 that have not yet moved to Phase 2. We invite the Global Forum to draw on the work of the FATF with respect to beneficial ownership. We also ask the Global Forum to establish a mechanism to monitor and review the implementation of the new global standard on automatic exchange of information.

52.    Developing countries should be able to reap the benefits of a more transparent international tax system, and to enhance their revenue capacity, as mobilizing domestic resources is critical to financing development. We recognize the importance of all countries benefitting from greater tax information exchange. We are committed to make automatic exchange of information attainable by all countries, including LICs, and will seek to provide capacity building support to them. We call on the Development Working Group in conjunction with the Finance Track, to work with the OECD, the Global Forum and other IOs to develop a roadmap showing how developing countries can overcome obstacles to participation in the emerging new standard in automatic exchange of information, and to assist them in meeting the standard in accordance with the action envisaged in the St Petersburg Development Outlook. The Working Group should report back by our next meeting.

Working with international organizations, we will continue to share our expertise, help build capacity, and engage in long-term partnership programmes to secure success. In this respect, we welcome the OECD Tax Inspectors without Borders initiative, which aims to share knowledge and increase domestic capacities in developing countries in the tax area. Finally, we are committed to continue to assist developing countries, including through the IOs, in identifying individual country needs and building capacity in the area of tax administration (in addition to automatic exchange of information) and encourage such support to be developing country led.

With tax annex here.

Reminder: we have commented on the G20 process already today, here.

Overall summary: this is rather short on specifics, and falls far short of some of the recommendations we have made (such as this one), but we have come a long way from even a couple of years ago. 
We are, of course, delighted to see official support for the Tax Inspectors Without Borders initiative, which is a proposal that TJN put to a government conference in Bonn, Germany, in 2011, and which rapidly found political support from a wide range of countries. 

Secrets and lies

Secrets and lies

by digby

Dana Milbank brought up an good point the other day when discussing the administration's unwillingness to share the information that would prove Assad was responsible for the sarin attack:

Officials say the evidence is incontrovertible that Assad used sarin gas against his people. Lawmakers emerging from secret, classified briefings seem to agree. But while members of Congress are coming around to an attack on Syria, the American public remains skeptical. Why? Maybe it’s because the government won’t let them in on the secret.

The public heard about another “slam dunk” case a decade ago and, then as now, Democratic and Republican lawmakers agreed that the secret evidence was compelling. And it turned out to be wrong. Now, administration officials are telling Americans to trust their assurances that the secret evidence is convincing and that their war planning is solid. But they won’t provide details.

Estimates of collateral damage? “Lower than a certain number which I would rather share with you in a classified setting,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey told lawmakers.

Response of the Arab and Muslim countries? “This is something I’d be happier discussing in greater detail with you in the closed session,” Kerry said.

Safeguards to keep military action limited? “We can talk about that in a closed session,” Dempsey said.

How would Russia and other Syrian allies respond to a U.S. strike? “We all agree that that would be best handled in a classified session,” Kerry said.

No, we don’t all agree.

The administration’s case against Assad may well be airtight. Walter Pincus, The Post’s longtime intelligence correspondent, tells me he hasn’t heard the sort of doubts from the intelligence community that he heard during the run-up to the Iraq war. The problem is that the refusal to declassify evidence helps opponents such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin cast doubt on the intelligence.

The administration is hiding behind the protection of “sources and methods,” but is any foe still unaware of the National Security Agency’s satellite and intercept capabilities?

Nobody is unaware that the US Big Brother is all up in everybody's business and I'm sure that Assad has no illusions that he is immune. The knowledge of this surveillance capability should make the US more willing to openly share this kind of information. The cat is definitely out of the bag.

And I would guess that on some level people feel the illogic of their refusal and wonder why they're doing it, particularly after the history of US government lying about these things. You can't blame people for being skeptical. And now that we know the full scope of US capability you really do have to wonder why the government still persists in saying "trust us" instead of just putting out the information that would put all these questions to rest.

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