Commissar Obamanation

Maurice Prendergast says:

I would like to share this very ‘solemn summary’ of the modus operandi of a charlatan and the curiously common characteristics to those exhibited by Farry and his fellow travellers.
This reminds me of the sales pitch used to hypnotise the people into believing that a ratepayer funded stadium would deliver salvation to the all. There are some real parallels – Barack Obama and Malcolm Farry seem to sing from the same song sheet.

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Email received.

Subject: This belongs in the EMAIL HALL OF FAME
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:56:44 -0400

How’s this for apocalyptic literature. This was written by a pastor’s wife in biblical prose as a commentary of current events. It is brilliant.

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And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land Called America, Having lost their morals, their initiative, and their Will to defend their liberties,
Chose as their Supreme Leader that Person known as “The One.”

He emerged from the vapours with a message that had no meaning;
But He Hypnotised the people telling them, “I am sent to save you.”
My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego,
And my Association with evil doers are of no consequence.
I shall save you with hope and Change.
Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the Land that he who preceded me
Is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed.
And the people rejoiced, For even though they knew not what “The One” would do, he had promised that it was good; and they believed.
And “The One” said “We live in The greatest country in the world.
Help me change everything about it!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah! Change is good!”
Then He said, “We are going to tax the rich fat-cats.”
And the People said “Sock it to them!”
“And redistribute their wealth.”
And the people said, “Show us the money!”
And then he said, “Redistribution of wealth is good for everybody..”

And Joe the plumber asked, “Are you kidding me?
You’re going to Steal my money and give it to the deadbeats??”
And “The One” Ridiculed and taunted him, and Joe’s personal
Records were hacked and publicised.
One lone reporter asked, “Isn’t that Marxist policy?”
And she was banished from the kingdom.

Then a citizen asked, “With no foreign relations experience and having
Zero military experience or knowledge, how will you deal with Radical terrorists?”
And “The One” said, “Simple. I shall sit with them and talk with them and show them
How nice we really are; and they will forget that they ever wanted to kill us all!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah!! We are safe at last, and we can beat our weapons
Into free cars for the people!”

Then “The One” said “I shall give 95% of you lower taxes.”
And one, Lone voice said, “But 40% of us don’t pay ANY taxes.
“So “The One” Said, “Then I shall give you some of the taxes the fat-cats pay!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah! Show us the money!”
Then “The One” said, “I shall tax your Capital Gains when you sell your homes!”
And the people yawned and the slumping housing market collapsed.
And He said. “I shall mandate employer-funded health care for every worker
And raise the minimum wage. And I shall give every Person unlimited healthcare
And medicine and transportation to the Clinics.”
(And no Muslim shall pay for their share of healthcare.)
And the people said, “Give me some of that!”
Then he said, “I shall penalise employers who ship jobs overseas.”
And the people said, “Where’s my rebate cheque?”

Then “The One” said, “I shall bankrupt the coal industry and
Electricity rates will skyrocket!”
And the people said, “Coal is Dirty, coal is evil, no more coal!
But we don’t care for that part about higher electric rates.”
So “The One” said, Not to worry. If Your rebate isn’t enough to cover
your expenses, we shall bail you out.
Just sign up with the ACORN and your troubles are over!”
Then He said, “Illegal immigrants feel scorned and slighted.
Let’s Grant them amnesty, Social Security, free education, free lunches,
Free medical care, bilingual signs and guaranteed housing…”
And The people said, “Hallelujah!” and they made him king!

And so it came to pass that employers, facing spiraling costs and Ever-higher taxes,
raised their prices and laid off workers. Others Simply gave up and went out of business and the economy sank like unto a rock dropped from a cliff.
The banking industry was destroyed. Manufacturing slowed to a Crawl.
And more of the people were without a means of support.

Then “The One” said, “I am the “the One”- The Messiah – and I’m here To save you!
We shall just print more money so everyone will have enough!”
But our foreign trading partners said unto Him. “Wait a Minute. Your dollar is not worth a pile of camel dung! You will have to pay more…
And “The One” said, “Wait a minute. That is unfair!!”
And the world said, “Neither are these other idiotic programs you have embraced.
Lo, you have become a Socialist state and a second-rate power.
Now you shall play by our rules!”

And the people cried out, “Alas, alas!! What have we done?”
But yea, verily, it was too late.
The people set upon The One and spat upon him and stoned him,
and his name was dung. And the once mighty nation was no more;
and the once proud people were without sustenance or shelter or hope.
And the Change “The One” had given them was as like unto a poison
that had destroyed them and like a whirlwind that consumed all that they had built.

And the people beat their chests in despair and cried out in anguish,
“Give us back our nation and our pride and our hope!!”
But it was too late, and their homeland was no more.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

The End of The Golden Weather?

Received from Calvin Oaten

Are we coming to the end of the ‘Golden Weather’? I say this, not in the meteorological sense, but rather in the sense that perhaps our society and its economic construct might be on the verge of a catastrophic change. Why? Well it seems that many signposts are pointing to an approaching collapse of the present model of the economy as constructed. This requires constant growth in order to sustain an ever increasing social budget. That in turn requires full or near full employment, a buoyant consumer market and a consequent ever increasing supply of energy and raw materials. None of these are finite, neither in New Zealand nor the Planet. The current model has, in order to foster this growth, taken upon itself to ‘jazz up’ consumption by cultivating a culture of instant gratification, fueled by intensive marketing, planned obsolescence, and last but not least, very easy credit.

This easy credit has been promoted heavily by governments, local bodies, banks, retailers and all manner of financial institutions. This has brought about a dynamic shift in society’s attitude to debt. It has encouraged folk to spend beyond their immediate ability, to the point where their indebtedness is assuming dangerous proportions. This is manifested by ‘economic bubbles’ forming, none more so than our own housing market. The people in the industry, real estate companies, banks, financial institutions all rev up the market by convincing people that property is a great investment which will always hold its value. But we only have to look at Ireland, the UK, the USA, and lately Australia to see the lie of this claim. Property can always go down just as it can go up. Take a look at Japan. Its property bubble burst in 1989 and has never recovered. Off by as much as 70-80%.

The result of all this is a hugely indebted developed world, including NZ. What caused this to happen? It seems to date back to around 1971, when then President Nixon was experiencing difficulty in financing the Vietnam war. At that time printing of money was constricted with the dollar being pegged to what is known as the gold standard. This meant that the amount of currency in circulation was limited by how much gold was held by the federal government. By leaving the gold standard the federal treasury was free to set its own parameters and to print accordingly. That resulted in a vast increase in all paper currencies around the world with a burst of inflation throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Historically, all monies eventually revert to the mean, and this has always been to a standard unit of value, GOLD. Throughout history, even before Roman times this has always prevailed. Trust in paper currencies sooner or later fail and there is a collapse.

We’ve seen it in modern times with Germany (in the 1920-30s), Argentina (several times), Greece, and very recently Iceland. The USA federal government has just breached its self-imposed debt ceiling of $16 trillion. If anyone wonders what $1 trillion represents, look at it as a time equivalent. Let’s say one was to repay $1 trillion at the rate of $1 per second. Working 24/7, 360 days per year it would take “32,000 YEARS”. So multiply that by 16 and it is easy to see that this debt will never be repaid. Worse, it is growing as we speak.

Those with the power are unbalancing the fairness factor.

This reckless attitude has permeated into the human psyche and we see evidence of it here in little old Dunedin. Our society has degenerated into a selfish me world. Those with the power are unbalancing the fairness factor.

Take remuneration for example, fewer and fewer people are taking a greater share of the economic cake, and are quite blatant about it. Wealth is flaunted while many are moving into poverty. Financial rewards are all out of line with production balance.

It is noticeable that many of the highest remunerated are drawing their rewards from the public’s purse, without so much as a blush. Here in Dunedin we have a local MP tabling a bill in Parliament seeking a minimum wage of $15 per hour. This, on a 40-hour week equates to $600 per week. It would be up from $13.50 per hour or $540 per week. This is being vigorously opposed by many. But on the other hand we see public servants and others receiving enormously higher rewards. We have seen several instances in the last few weeks.

The retiring CEO of the Otago Museum with a salary of $310,00 per annum (pa) or $5,961 per week (pw). The DVML CEO receives $250,000 pa or $4,807 pw. The council owned company Delta, where the CEO is paid $380,000 to $390,000 pa or $7,500 pw. 41 additional staff paid over $100,000 pa or $1923 pw. Our own DCC CEO is rewarded with between $340,000 and $360,000 pa or $6,730 pw. The Vice-chancellor of our University of Otago receiving over $500,000 pa or $10,000 pw. Our DCHL group of companies last year paid its 7 directors $725,444 for what would optimistically involve about four weeks equivalent work each. This is repeated up and down the country and if anyone thinks this is sustainable they have to be in “cloud cuckoo land”.

On our local public scene we have seen the city’s debt burgeon from $212.486 million as at 30 June 2005 to $602.008 million at 31 December 2011. We now know that this has considerably changed for the worse, since. The stadium is a financial disaster, in serious damage control, the Otago Settlers Museum is over $40 million, the Town Hall/Conference Centre is over $50 million, and we are looking at somewhere near $100 million for the Tahuna upgrade. No-one in office seems to either understand, or simply passes it off as someone else’s problem.

We elect these people to conserve and look after our treasure, and what happens? It just goes from bad to worse, with all manner of rascals leaching off us in different ways. If only someone in office had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say, “enough, this has got to stop”. But sadly, it gets back to that culture I mentioned. “I’m OK Jack”, never mind anyone else.

Is all this sustainable? Ask yourself. We don’t know when the situation will break, but it is certain that it will. The whole developed world is awash with debt and frantically creating more by the day, in a desperate move to save the situation. But it is pretty simple, how can more debt solve a chronic debt malady? It is pretty much synonymous with supplying a chronic alcoholic with more whisky. We are in for very interesting times.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr