Frank Newman: Tree house troubles

Oh dear. What has the world come to? A to-do has erupted in Dunedin about the tree house grandad Trevor built. It became national news when the Dunedin City Council required the tree house to be removed because it did not meet the Building Code.

The "But it's a bloody tree house!" response did not dissuade Council Officers from exercising their serious responsibilities as an "independently accredited building control authority".

Mole News

Māori state house tenant appointed to Housing NZ board
For the first time, a Māori state house tenant has been appointed to the Housing NZ board.

Disability activist and lawyer Dr Huhana Hickey looks to bring a new perspective to the director role.

NZCPR Weekly: Free Speech Under Threat

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we investigate the importance of free speech and look into two cases where it has been denied, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Dr Bruce Moon shares with us a speech on fake history that he intended delivering to a gathering at his local library – until they banned him, and our poll asks whether you feel that your right to free speech is under threat in New Zealand today.

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H. Sterling Burnett: US EPA - Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

Administrator Scott Pruitt's resignation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) marked the end of a productive but tumultuous time at the agency, but when it comes to policy, the new acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, is likely to stay the course.

However history judges Pruitt’s tenure at EPA, critics and supporters of Pruitt can agree EPA under Pruitt began a fundamental transformation of its operations. 

Ending sue-and-settle agreements; reshaping EPA’s science advisory committees to better reflect diversity of geography, experience, and points of view; reducing the chance of graft by halting those who make EPA research funding decisions from also receiving funding for their research; beginning to roll back myriad regulatory actions, including the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, the massive increase in the Corporate Fuel Economy Standard (CAFE), and various energy efficiency mandates for appliances, EPA began changing the way it did business.

Brian Giesbrecht: Are trade wars coming?

The Trump administration has unveiled a long list of punishing tariffs that will affect everyone. This time around they will not exempt Canadian steel and aluminium. 

Is this the beginning of a worldwide trade war, or simply a clever negotiating tactic by a President who sees himself as an expert on “the art of the deal” – an opening salvo in his campaign to get a better deal for American workers?

Obviously, we don’t know the answer to this question yet, as world leaders scramble to figure out their response. 

Karl du Fresne: Let's hear the Canadians for ourselves and decide then whether it's dangerous

It is often the first instinct of the far left, when confronted with ideas or opinions they don’t approve of, to try to shut them down.

There was a tiny but telling example of this in a letter to the Dominion Post a few days ago from a reader who didn’t like my column outlining the advance of neo-Marxism. He said it was “disappointing” (note the morally superior tone and phony sanctimony) to see such opinions being given oxygen by a “credible New Zealand paper”.

In other words, he didn’t like what I said, so I should have been censored. Well, suck it up, buster. It’s called free speech.

Viv Forbes: Watching Weather Waves, but Missing Climate Tides.

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda which is served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Earth’s climate is never still – it is always changing, with long-term trends, medium-term reversals and minor oscillations. Humanity is best served by those who use good science to study geology, astronomy and climate history searching for clues to climate drivers and the underlying natural cycles and trends hidden in short-term weather fluctuations.

Justin Haskins: Six months in, tax cuts are already providing historic gains for minorities, women, and small businesses

Unemployment rates for minority groups are reaching historic lows.

When Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December, congressional Democrats denounced the legislation as a reckless attempt to help wealthy corporations at the expense of everyone else. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., famously dismissed the law’s benefits to most taxpayers as “crumbs.”

Six months later, many of the groups Pelosi and other Democrats warned would be worse off as a result of the tax reform legislation — including minorities, women, and small businesses — are not only thriving, they are experiencing some of the most notable economic growth in the country's history.

Frank Newman: KiwiBuild bargains

The housing cost crisis affects virtually everyone. That is pretty much the conclusion one can draw from the KiwiBuild eligibility rules which were announced last week.

To be eligible for a KiwiBuild home, a buyer must:

• Be a first-home buyer or "second chancer" (being those who have previously owned a home but are through adverse circumstance are in a position similar to the first home buyer);
• Be a New Zealand citizen or resident;
• Intend to own and live in the home for at least three years;
• Have an income below $120,000 if a sole purchaser or $180,000 for a couple.

Melanie Phillips: The British Government’s Brexit Betrayal

We don’t yet know whether Brexiteers in the Conservative party will seek to bring down the Prime Minister Theresa May over the UK negotiating position that she forced through Cabinet on Friday.

We don’t yet know whether the EU will accept her “compromise” package or will reject it with the contempt they have shown until now at any suggestion of a “pick and mix” approach to the EU’s customs union and rules.

But what we can say with near-certainty is that what Mrs May has done is put in serious doubt a Conservative victory at the next general election – and maybe at any further general election for a long time after that.

NZCPR Weekly: Government Conceit

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we investigate the cause of the fall in business confidence and the implications for the future, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Anthony Willy shares his concerns over the threat that socialism – and all the other ‘isms’ – pose to individual freedom and our free market economy, and our poll asks whether a council’s decision to remove a tree house was over-regulation and PC gone mad, or a council doing its job and upholding the law.

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Karl du Fresne: The long march of cultural Marxism

A significant anniversary passed recently with surprisingly little fanfare.

News stories marking the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx focused on the fawning tribute paid to him by the Chinese president Xi Jinping.

There was a large dollop of irony here, since the modern Chinese communist party is highly selective in its application of Marxism. It has combined Marxist-style political totalitarianism – brutal suppression of dissent and absolute obeisance to the party – with a largely unfettered capitalist-style economy. 

GWPF Newsletter: It's Roll-Back Time

Ontario Scraps $2 Billion Carbon Tax & Axes Green Subsidies

In this newsletter:

1) It’s Roll-Back Time: Ontario Scraps $2 Billion Carbon Tax & Axes Green Subsidies
Toronto Sun, 3 July 2018 
 
2) Canada’s Carbon Tax Racket Is Coming To An End
Toronto Sun, 25 June 2018

Frank Newman: The rising cost of construction

Last week a China Airways flight touched down in Auckland with two hundred construction workers on board. They were brought over by a Chinese based construction company building a luxury hotel in Auckland.  They are the first of many overseas workers required to fill  a labour shortage gap in the construction sector. 

According to Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway that gap may be 30,000 workers: plumbers, electricians, engineers, builders and project managers.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of fit and able New Zealanders receive the unemployment benefit. It makes no sense that there is a skills shortage in the construction sector at all, but even less sense that such a large potential labour pool is paid to do nothing  - although to be fair, to say they do nothing is not correct.

Brian Giesbrecht: Happy New Zealand’s Suicide Problem

New Zealand is a country that is consistently rated on the U.N. “Happiness Index” as a country that has one of the happiest populations on the planet. And yet, amidst all this happiness there is very deep unhappiness as well – because New Zealand is now also the teenage suicide capital of the world.

How can this profoundly unsettling anomaly be explained?

In fact, the answer becomes apparent when the racial backgrounds of the suicidal teenagers are examined. Just as in Canada, where Indigenous youth account for a tragically disproportionate number of suicides, so it is in New Zealand, where their Indigenous population, the Maori, are disproportionately represented in the suicide numbers.

Richard Epstein: Donald Trump’s Trade Travesty

The presidency of Donald Trump has been marked by a war between two totally inconsistent intellectual mindsets: his disastrous trade policy and his wise domestic policy. Let’s start with the good news first.

On the domestic front, Donald Trump has largely followed, to great positive effect, the classical liberal playbook, which spurs growth through a combination of low taxation and market deregulation. Under Trump’s leadership, removal of the government’s heavy foot from the throat of the economy has paid off. 

The key move was to junk the popular Keynesian paradigm with its flawed assumption that one or more low-interest economic stimulus programs could spend the United States back to prosperity. But these glorified transfer programs only take from Peter in order to pay Paul. Their net effect is virtually always negative.

Dave Hill: Alarmist views on climate change hoax

The fact is, climate change is happening. It has from the beginning of creation. Ice ages, ocean level rises and falls, forests turned into deserts, deserts turned into forests; it's all happened many times and will do so in the future.

However, are the increasingly alarmist views, largely predicted by the leftist media, scientists, naive politicians and some commentators, actually going to become reality? 

The truth is, that, despite the tsunami of dire predictions forecast over the last 20 to 30 years, very little has changed. The Arctic ice shelf is still in place and is actually growing despite predictions that it would disappear by 2014. The Maldives are still above water also despite claims to the contrary. 

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Protectionism – putting own people first

I’ll come out with it straight away: I’m a protectionist. I have always been a protectionist, and will always be a protectionist. You can now assemble a firing squad.

I’m not an economist, but then as Marx correctly (for once) pointed out, economics is a sphere of political/ideological activity – which is why you’ll find highly qualified economists backing every conceivable economic system on a very broad spectrum from laissez-faire capitalism to Stalinism.

GWPF Newsletter: 'Stranded Assets’ Are Booming

Fossil Fuels Topple Tech As Top Sector

In this newsletter:

1) ‘Stranded Assets’ Are Booming: Fossil Fuels Topple Tech As Top Sector
The Wall Street Journal, 28 June 2018 

2) Think Coal Is Dead? It Could Be About To Soar
Daily Mail, 30 June 2018

NZCPR Weekly: Local Government Activism

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week, we look into concerns that local government is becoming more ‘activist’ and we examine some of the Government’s planned changes to local authorities, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Bryan Leyland outlines how Local Government New Zealand’s climate change project will squander money and damage the economy in a futile attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, and our poll asks whether it’s time to remove the Government’s historic rates exemption, so they can pay their fair share of local authority rates.

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