John McLean: Verrall in peril?

Labour Party Member of Parliament Ayesha Verrall has accused Health Commissioner Lester Levy of corruptly inflating the size of Health New Zealand’s financial deficit, and of having a “reputation for cooking the books”. Essentially, she’s falsely accusing Levy of being a crook.

Verrall made her accusations at a Parliamentary Health Select Committee hearing on 3 December 2024, as Labour’s shadow Health Cabinet Minister.

Richard Rahn: The High Cost of Slander

Endless cruelties have been and continue to be committed on the basis of group slander. The communists and socialists imprisoned and slaughtered many of their merchant and property-owning citizens on the basis of a gross slander, not to mention what the Nazis did to the Jews. In America, blacks, gays, many ethnic groups and women were first stereotyped, then slandered, and then discriminated against. 

But the fashion of which groups of individuals can be slandered has changed to such people as Wall Street bankers; pharmaceutical, coal and oil company executives; conservative scholars; those who question the global warming establishment; and white males, among others.