The FP reports:
On Wednesday, the day after the election, most of us are going to roll out of bed, have our breakfast, and get on with our day—no matter which presidential candidate wins. But students at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy—where diplomats and policymakers are molded—have another option: They can play with Legos. Seriously.
In an email to McCourt students, Jaclyn Clevenger, the school’s director of student engagement, introduced the school’s post-election “Self-Care Suite.”
“In recognition of these stressful times,” she wrote, “all McCourt community members are welcome to gather. . . in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day.”
And what are these activities:
10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.: Tea, Cocoa, and Self-Care
11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Legos Station
12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.: Healthy Treats and Healthy Habits
1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.: Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises
2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.: Milk and Cookies
4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: Legos and Coloring
5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.: Snacks and Self-Guided Meditation
Students pay US$60,000 a year to go to McCourt. I hope they get at least chocolate chip cookies for their fees.
Future Labour Leader Michael Wood has been decrying the possibility that airport security may be devolved from CAA to individual airports. He says this is terrible.
However a reader has pointed out to me that seaport security is done by the 21 ports, not by the Government. The Government has an overall regulatory role, but doesn’t actually run the security checks at each port.
No reason this model is unsuitable for airports.
The Taxpayers’ Union reports:
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal through an official information act request that Sports NZ’s “Say Thanks to Your Coach” campaign cost $171,598, with Sports NZ contributing $131,598 and Coach for Life contributing a further $40,000. The campaign featured a website for a month, which was used to send e-cards and video messages.
Commenting on this, Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager, James Ross, said:
“Sports NZ’s ability to somehow spend more than $575 per thank-you email takes the gold for government waste.
This is a great example of what waste is in the system, when some on the left insist that you can;t cut funding without impacting core services.
To spent $172,000 on a campaign that generated 298 e-mails is appalling.
Vision for Wellington has announced:
It’s no secret that Wellington faces challenges. Let’s do something about about them.
Vision for Wellington unites people passionate about Wellington and committed to seeing our city thrive. We’re a bipartisan, collective voice advocating for Wellington and aiming to set a bold direction for the city.
We will facilitate expert-led panels early next year, gathering local thought leaders in areas like innovation, arts and culture, events and hospitality, economic growth, transport, infrastructure, civic leadership and distinctiveness. Wellingtonians will be able to attend, share, and contribute. We aim to inspire, and to be inspired.
Our goal is to co-create a Vision for Wellington – something aspirational and practical in equal measure – and a source of pride and positivity about the city and its future.
Good to see people come together to try and provide the leadership that is lacking at Wellington City Council. The list of founders is very impressive:
Two former Mayors, a former Governor-General and one of our top business leaders, plus many more.
I encourage people to sign up for updates. We need to change the status quo, with a positive vision and people who can make that happen.
Radio NZ profiles The Pākehā Project:
A group of Pākehā is embracing the opportunity to honour Te Tiriti, saying that a commitment to tino rangatiratanga strengthens, rather than divides, Aotearoa.
The Pākehā Project is an organisation of tangata Tiriti leaders who run programmes and workshops for Pākehā, aimed at deepening their understanding of the constitutional foundations of Aotearoa. …
The Pākehā Project’s work was focused on helping people become comfortable with discomfort-acknowledging emotions such as grief, rage, guilt, and shame, without using them as a tool for blame, Sinclair said.
“We don’t try and shame people or make people feel guilty, but we know that’s going to come when you start to open yourself up to these stories and start to see the harm that has been caused by whiteness in the world.”
This group is so dripping wet that you could fill up a swimming pool with them.
She said such sentiments only underscored the importance of anti-racism education.
“This gave me a small glimpse into the hate that fear can elicit. And it is exactly why we need programmes like ours and many others that directly address how racism and oppression work.”
I’d say ascribing harm to the the colour of ones skin is a prime example of racism.
UPDATE: It’s a very profitable grift.
You pay $15,000 per person to be taught how bad white people are. I wonder how many government departments are clients!
The NY Post reports:
P’nut the Squirrel, of internet fame, has been euthanized after the pet was seized by New York state earlier this week, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The seven-year-old gray rescue squirrel, commonly referred to as “P’Nut” on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, was put to death, along with Fred the raccoon, so that the animals could be tested for the presence of rabies, according to a statement from the agency obtained by WETM.
He had the squirrel as a pet for seven years. The government raided his house, searched it for five hours, and then killed P’Nut. All because of an anonymous complaint from someone in Texas.
This is why we should be wary of giving too much power to governments.
The hysterical smears continue. Some on the left live in a fictional world where only organisations they agree with are grass roots organisations, and when an organisation succeeds they disagree with, their minds are so limited they think it must be due to overseas big money.
Funnily enough they never scrutinise the organisations they like. Action Station doesn’t even publish annual accounts because they are a company.
The FSU was created because Auckland’s Mayor claimed he blocked two Canadian speakers from being able to speak at a Council venue. Then Massey deplatformed Don Brash and support grew, and thanks to the efforts of so many on the left, support keeps growing for the FSU as we see weekly examples of attempts to sack people for their political opinions.
As I understand it the FSU has around 70,000 supporters on their mailing list. And over 10,000 have donated to the FSU. You can’t get more grassroots than that. But Greg can’t actually deal with the possibility that the FSU is a successful grassroots organisations, so he resorts to conspiracy smears.
Some on the left don’t understand that the Internet has allowed ordinary New Zealanders to organise and support causes they believe in. Whether it be Taxpayers’s Union, Groundswell, Free Speech Union or Hobson’s Pledge – they all get the vast bulk of their funding through thousands of small dollar donations from ordinary New Zealanders.
I previously blogged on how the Electoral Commission referred Te Pati Maori to the Police for not filing their annual financials statements by 30 June 2024, as required by law.
Their party secretary is Lance Norman (a manager in one of the Tamihere organisations) and I wonder if he realises the personal risk he is at.
S210J(2) of the Electoral Act says:
A party secretary is guilty of a corrupt practice if the party secretary, without reasonable excuse,(a) provides the Electoral Commission with annual financial statements for the party after the late period; or
(b) fails to provide the Electoral Commission with annual financial statements for the party.
The late period is 15 working days from the deadline, so 21 July 2024, which we are three months past. So Mr Norman could be charged with a corrupt practice, not just an illegal practice.
And what is the penalty?
either or both a term of imprisonment not exceeding 2 years or a fine not exceeding $100,000
The fine might not be a concern as he could be reimbursed for that, but if I was Mr Norman I’d be very worried about the possibility of jail time, unless he has a reasonable excuse for not providing the party’s financial statements as required by law.
Tama Potaka announced the appointment of Richard Prebble, Ken Williamson and Kevin Prime to the Waitangi Tribunal.
Some people think the Tribunal is a judicial body, but in reality is is appointed by the Government of the day. 19 of 20 members have a maximum term of three years, so in one term of Government the Government will appoint 95% to 100% of the members.
Those who claim the Waitangi Tribunal, not Parliament, should decide what the Treaty means should reflect that this can mean the Government of the day can decide, by simply appointing members with a particular viewpoint.
On Wednesday we will get most of(but not all) of the US election results. In the post I’m going to go through the various forecasts and predictions. There will be some further polls in the next 48 hours, but they are unlikely to move the averages much.
US House
Is 2022 the Republicans won a majority being 222 to 213 of the 435 House seats, flipping control. However the polls had them winning by a larger margin, so they underperformed to the polls.
Since then, the Republicans have dropped to 220 seats, just two above the 218 needed to control the chamber.
538 and DDHQ have the Republicans slight favourites to retain control, as does the Polymarket prediction market. The naysayers are The Economist at 45% and Race to WH at 30%.
The actual seat projections are as close as you can get. You need 218 for control and 538 and DDHQ has them on 218, and Cook on 221. Others have them just missing out with The Economist on 216 and Race to WH on 213.
This indicates that not only is control as close as you can get, but whichever party wins may have the slimmest of majorities, which will make life very hard for the Speaker.
The Senate
The Democrats hold this 51 to 49. In a 50/50 tie the Vice-President’s casting vote determines control.
All forecasts are for the Republicans to win at least 51 seats. 538 has this at 90% probability, DDHQ 74%, Economist 71%, Race to WH 65%. Polymarket betting is at 79%.
All models project the Republicans winning back the majority with 51 or 52 seats.
538 has the Republicans 99.9% likely to flip West Virginia where they have a 38% lead and 91% likely to flip Montana with a 7.5% lead. This gets them to 51, so would be a huge upset to fall short.
No other seats are forecast to flip but the Democrats only have probabilities of 53% in Ohio, 69% in Wisconsin, 72% in Pennsylvania and 76% in Michigan. It is quite possible one of those four will flip also, making it 52 to 48.
While the Republicans will be glad for a majority, no matter how small, they should be doing much better. The electoral map is the most favourable in a generation and terrible candidate choices have allowed the Democrats to remain ahead in seats where they should lose, especially Arizona.
Governors
Only 11 of 50 Governors are up for election. The only toss up is New Hampshire which has the Republican candidate up by around 2%. If they retain this, 27 of 50 states will be governed by Republicans.
State Legislatures
Republicans control 57 state chambers, Democrats 41 and two are bipartisan.
10 chambers could flip. They are:
Overall 28 state legislatures are controlled by Republican, 20 by Democrats and 2 are split.
If you take Governors into account, you have:
The aim is to get the trifecta.
President
All six aggregators have Trump ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. That doesn’t mean he will win them, just that ni matter which way you aggregate the polls, he is ahead. The leads of 0.7% to 2.3% are all within the margin of error and the normal polling error in a presidential election.
That gets Trump to 268 electoral votes – one short of a tie. Pennsylvania looks to be the critical state. He leads on average by 0.3%, ranging from 0.3% behind with one aggregator to 0.7% ahead with another. This is the state to watch.
Michigan and Wisconsin have Harris ahead by 0.9% and 0.4%. Still very close. Trump could win all seven swing states – as could Harris.
Four of the six sites have Trump forecast to win 287 to 251. One has him 297 to 241, and one has Harris 270 to 268.
In terms of probability, Trump’s chances range from 49.8% to 53.4%. This is as close to a toss up as you can get.
It will all come down to which demographics turnout better than the polls predicted.
This is the final update, unless there is a November surprise. I’ll have a live-blog from midday on Wednesday.
The Taxpayers’ Union said:
Te Pāti Māori MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer managed to spend $39,209 on flights over just three months! And, thanks to some social media investigation work, it was evident that rather than flying to Hamilton, Ms Ngarewa-Packer had been
serving constituentsholidaying in Hawaii on your dollar.We asked for more details – it’s taxpayer money after all – BUT were told by Parliamentary Services to get lost!
I don’t know if the Hawaii trip was paid for by taxpayers, but it would explain the $39,000 spending on flights in just 13 weeks.
This is the social media post that has the TU wondering if this is the cause of much of the $39,000 bill. Looks like a hard working trip.
So WCC after years of appalling satisfaction ratings from residents has decided that they best way forward is to stop asking residents if they are happy with the Council!
The conventional wisdom based on the polls is Trump is favoured to win the election. But a new poll out in Iowa has shocked the status quo assumptions.
The poll for the Des Moines Register has Harris ahead of Trump by 3% – 47% to 44% in Iowa, driven by a surge in female support for Harris.
In September the same poll had Trump ahead by 47% to 43% and in June Trump was 50% to 34% for Biden.
Breakdowns are:
Now this is only one poll, and all pollsters can have an outlier poll., It may well be an outlier, and all kudos goes to Anne Selzer for publishing an outlier, as it is suspected many US polling firms herd their polls towards the average in the final weeks.
Selzer’s Iowa poll is regarded as very very credible by professionals, as she has often published polls seen as outliers, which turned out to be very accurate. She has been polling Iowa since 1987, so for 37 years.
Their record is:
Also in 2008 she was the only pollster to predict Obama beating Clinton in the primary, and has often had Senate polls which have benefited outliers to other polls, but proven accurate.
So if this was any other pollster in any other state, you would almost ignore it. And it is more than possible the poll will be wrong. It is almost unthinkable that Trump will lose a state by 3% which he won by 8% in 2020. But it is quite possible Selzer has picked up a surge of support for Harris by women voters, than has not been reflected elsewhere.
It will be a fascinating election night on Wednesday.
Graham Adams writes:
The news early this month that a Pakeha patient asked not to be treated by Asian staff at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital and that the hospital complied was quickly and roundly condemned by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and health-worker unions. Many of the public, too, criticised the patient’s request as blatant racism.
While the code of consumers’ rights states, “Every consumer has the right to express a preference as to who will provide services and have that preference met where practicable”, the clause is presumably intended to resolve individual personality clashes between patients and the nurses and doctors looking after them, not a blanket refusal to be treated by a swathe of ethnic groups coming under the umbrella term of “Asian”.
The request was blatant racism, and I think the hospital should have told the patient that if he doesn’t like the race of his medical staff, he is welcome to go elsewhere.
What went unremarked in the furore, however, is that the idea that patients might want to have medical staff who look like them and whom they feel comfortable with is officially sanctioned at the highest levels of the health system. Both Auckland and Otago medical schools run extensive race-based, affirmative-action programmes to do exactly that.
It’s an interesting point. The rationale is that patients may feel more comfortable with someone of their own ethnicity.
If a patient asked for a doctor of a specific ethnicity, as opposed to a doctor not of a specific ethnicity, would that also be unacceptable?
There has been some discussion that NZ may follow other countries with the dominant major parties fading over time, to be replaced by more extreme ones. I thought it would be useful to look at the combined vote share for National and Labour under MMP.
I don’t see a trend there. The 2023 result was greater than the first three MMP elections. It is quite possible support for the two major parties will never get back to high 70s, but that is not to say it will drop further.
Kemi Badenoch has been elected the 19th leader of the UK Conservative Party. She is the 4th woman and 2nd non-white to lead the party, while UK Labour have had 19 white male leaders in a row. This of course has not stopped a Labour MP calling her a white supremacist in blackface!
Here’s some facts on Badenoch:
Nate Silver has written an interesting post giving 24 reasons why Trump could (not will) win. He is making the case it is not Kamala’s to lose, but hers to win, as so many factors favour Trump. His 24 are:
An excellent and insightful list.
Richard Reeves at Politico writes:
Contrary to progressive belief, young men are not turning into a generation of misogynists. Support for gender equality continues to rise, including among men under 30. The problem seems more to be that many men simply don’t see much recognition of their issues, or even of their identity, on the political left.
If the Democrats are the “women’s party,” as one party strategist claimed, it might not be surprising that men are looking in another direction. The official party platform lists the groups it is proud to serve; women are listed but men are not. There is a new Gender Policy Council in the White House, but it has not addressed a single issue facing boys or men.
As I blogged in 2018, boys and men fare badly in numerous areas of education, health, and crime etc.
When problems are neglected, they metastasize into grievances. And grievances can be weaponized in service of reactionary goals. The solution, then, is almost comically simple: Don’t neglect the problems.
The mistake being made on both sides is to see gender equality as a zero-sum game; that to do more for boys and men means doing less on behalf of girls and women.
Absolutely. We should have a Minister for Men, just as we have a Minister for Women. That is because men and women do need different things from the health and education systems (and men are doing much worse in them).
The author proposes some policies for the US, including:
I’d love to see one or more NZ political parties go into the next election with a men’s policy.
A guest post by Sparticus Abundare:
Prompted by the 73 Oil shock, France built 62 Nuclear power stations from the mid 70s to the mid 90s. Now their CO2 emissions are half that of their neighbours and if it wasn’t for the distractions of all that cheese and wine they would be smoking it in an energy starved world.
In the 50s 60s and 70s NZ built out a fantastic Hydroelectric power grid that’s done our country proud, It enables us to boast about our 85% renewables grid, and until recently provided us with cheap power for things like Aluminium smelters and Paper mills, Stuff that’s not Cows or Sheep or trees
Today the building out of the electricity grid is at least partially in the hands of the “private sector” Their brief is to ensure power generation sufficiency. The cheapest power is now wind and solar, there incentives are to maximise returns, not to build serious durable reliable power stations.
Renewables are cheap and can be built out like lego, but they are intermittent. They don’t work when the wind doesn’t wind or the sun doesn’t sun and they need replacing every 20-30 years.
To extend Chris Popoffs metaphor, wind and solar are the Narcissistic father of power supply. On a sunny windy day they spark up, flooding the grid with power, crashing the price, saying “Hey look at me, I’m bloody good, surplus power everywhere, aren’t you lucky I’m around”. Then on a still cold night they are nowhere to be seen, and all the old faithful’s, Coal, Hydro, Geothermal run breathlessly to fill the hole left by the absent narcissistic father who’s not around when he’s needed most.
All those that have swallowed the Kool aide and actually believe the renewables propaganda, are now paying the price, just look at the electricity prices in the UK, Germany and California. Once you get to about 30% wind and solar the grid becomes unstable, and everything goes third world.
I say let’s trash sufficiency and aim for abundance; we can even do it under the guise of saving the planet. Let’s do away with crappy little bicycle lanes, Carbon markets, Farmer burp taxes, and put tax money into electricity abundance instead. Cheap and abundant energy is a strategy that would make NZ prosper.
Imagine the manufacturing jobs that would be possible here, were power prices down around the lowest in the world.
We have Hydro Stations consented and ready to go, Gas, somewhat crippled by our past dear leader, but hopefully still has legs, and Geothermal has the potential to double or triple its contribution. The power all three provide is baseload, they would stabilise our grid and make it cheaper in the long term.
Then there is renaissance nuclear power, exploding everywhere. Theres 60 plants under construction worldwide with a further 110 planned. The 60 under construction will produce ten times New Zealand’s current generating capacity.
It’s fascinating to look at the build out of Nuclear, by country. Theres 2 being built in the UK, 1 in France, China 31, India 7, Egypt, Turkey & Russia 4 each, Bangladesh & Korea 2 each, Argentina, Slovakia and Iran one a piece. This is how the west fades, not from Invasion or revolution but from outdated dogma and sclerotic bureaucracies unable to get out of their own way.
It makes sense to hang back a little and see what system is best, there’s a lot out there, but planning for and installing base infrastructure for Nuclear now, could be resource well spent
France has let its nuclear fleet degrade, captured by the anti-nuclear zeitgeist of the late 20th century. It was only running at 50% capacity when Russia cut the gas supply to Europe. Let’s not be captured by the de growth zealots, lets not believe that things would be better if we just consumed less. Let’s be like Bob the Builder, “Can we build it, YES WE CAN”.
Radio NZ reports:
A skin cancer expert is calling for sunscreen to be made cheaper – either by removing GST or offering it on prescription – to reduce New Zealand’s sky-high melanoma rate.
University of Otago skin cancer prevention researcher Dr Bronwen McNoe told Midday Report’s Charlotte Cook that sunscreen was significantly more expensive in New Zealand than in Australia.
The two countries shared the world’s highest melanoma rate, and New Zealand had the unenviable record of the world’s highest death rate from skin cancer.
McNoe said she supported any initiative that reduced the cost of sunscreen for consumers, including the current petition demanding the removal of GST.
No, no, no, no, no. The moment you start treating the GST as a way to decrease prices on things you approve of, and increase prices on things you disapprove of, you destroy the simplicity of the system and massively increase compliance costs.
If the barrier to sunscreen use is price (of which I am not aware of any quality research), then you deal with that through Pharmac, or subsidies. You do not wreck the GST system.
Save the Kiwi announced:
Kiwi feathers collected from across the US and Europe will soon be winging their way home in a repatriation effort between the United States of America and New Zealand.
Why?
We have 70,000 Kiwis in NZ, and lots of feathers. I want us to spend money saving Kiwis, not flying a few feathers back to NZ.
I could understand if they were something rare or extinct like moa eggs, but kiwi feathers are neither.