John Key’s government has managed to continue the work begun by Ruth Richardson and has obviously learned from Jenny Shipley’s mistake of not ensuring public acceptance of drastic welfare change. Ruth Richardson’s Mother of All Budgets is regarded as the most significant step in dismantling our welfare state. Drastically cutting welfare benefits was a deliberate strategy to drive down wage costs. It was Richardson’s belief that maintaining unemployment at around 5% and keeping welfare payments low, workers would then be more likely to accept lower wages. Child poverty was around 8% pre 1991 but escalated to 15% by 1992. While there was some reduction under the previous Labour Government, with the introduction of the Working for Families tax credit, child poverty is now close to 30% in 2016.
Find other articles & links about John Key & his corporation that parades as a government by searching in categories (left of any page) or the search box (at right of any page).
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A corporation has been defined as “… a business structure whose sole reason for existence is the earning of profits by manufacturing products for as little as possible and selling them for as much as possible. It does not matter whether the product does good or evil; what counts is that it be consumed – in ever-increasing quantities”.
(Note: therein lies the root of our whole recycling problem … think of all the packaging that goes with those products … plastic wrapping, meat trays, polystyrene and plastic bottles just for starters).
Giant multinational corporations have become society’s most dominant institution. As a student of social policy in the early 1980s I well recall being told there would come a day when corporations would control governments … difficult at the time to conceive of … nevertheless this is exactly what has happened. It was difficult to conceive because it was an era when unemployment was low, benefits for the few who required them were at a livable level and education was relatively free. We were a welfare state. That has changed for we were sharply reminded we were a capitalist welfare state.
Maori Party Co-Leader Marama Fox featured on the news on Saturday (25 June 2016) having walked out on a discussion with a tabacco company spokesman on TV3’s program ‘The Nation’. She testily put down her microphone and left the interview telling him he should “crawl back into the hole that is reserved for the corporate executioners”. I couldn’t help but agree with her sentiments. Interviewer Lisa Owen rebuked and reminded her that Imperial Tobacco’s Axel Gietz was an invited guest … we know what side she is on of course … serving her corporate employers.
The purpose of the discussion was the fact that NZ had decided to go down the road of compulsory plain tobacco packaging and Gietz had not ruled out the possibility of suing the NZ government for this.
Maori Party Co-leader challenges tobacco company spokesman: watch the video at this LINK
“Imperial Tobacco make billions of dollars every year profiting off misery and death. You are a peddler of death, that is what you get your money from and … you come to NZ in some public service to help us in the debate when we already knows that it kills our children” … Maori Party Co-leader Marama Fox
“For the last 27 years I have not attended a funeral of someone in our family” said Fox, “and I’ve attended numerous funerals – who has died of natural causes”.
This was reminiscent of Hone Harawira’s challenges to the tobacco corporates. He often cites a statement by one of Big Tobacco’s CEOs:
“We don’t smoke this shit – we sell it. We reserve the right to smoke it, to the young, the poor, the black, and the stupid.”
Hone Harawira, leader of the Mana Party speaks out strongly against the tactics of tobacco companies [Photo: Wikipedia]
Back in 2006 he questioned them on that statement at the launch of TOA (Tobacco Out of Aotearoa). Harawira said … “today we launch a campaign to rid our country of bastards who think like this, the companies they work for, and the poison they sell us”. Statistically he said, cigarette smoking accounts for one third of all Maori deaths and Maori women have the highest rate of lung cancer in the world. Tobacco also accounted for 4500 Kiwi deaths in 2006. (Read more about his campaign at this link).
Back in March 2010 at the Auckland hearings of the Māori Affairs Select Committee inquiry, British American Tobacco NZ (BAT NZ) representatives were grilled by a Select Committee that included Harawira, following their presentation on tobacco. (Read more on that at the link).
Targeting the Vulnerable
Whilst the point is always made by all sides of the argument that people have a choice, while that is true, I would add nevertheless that these companies are decidedly predatory. They aggressively target the young and vulnerable. This is documented in their own internal planning documents exposed in this documentary on how Indonesian children as young as two years old have an addiction to cigarette smoking. These companies target nations that have little or no regulatory frameworks around tobacco sales so they exist in the same time warp the West did back in the ’40s and ’50s when the medical profession was promoting tobacco as good for one’s health.
The point here is, the tobacco companies now know that smoking is a health risk, yet they are taking full advantage of the ignorance of this fact by poorer countries. Now if that is not predatory I don’t know what is.
If you doubt that children are targeted, check out this documentary on BAT which goes undercover and exposes their tactics, unashamedly targeting and recruiting eleven year old children. The children in the Indonesian link above believe that smoking will make them wise and intelligent and help them pass their exams.
They know no shame so why not shame them publicly, like Fox and Harawira have? Why pander to these wealthy “corporate executioners” who have no qualms about trading in children’s lives.
Corporations
Corporations, for any who aren’t aware, are about profits not people. A timely reminder. Our country NZ is a corporation as also are many if not most of its former so called government departments. So also are our District Councils. Again, their focus is profits and the fact they are corporations explains their flagrant disregard nowadays for democratic processes. Corporations simply aren’t democratic. They operate for the shareholder first and foremost. They need to be challenged.
The same medical industry that claimed smoking was good for our health is still at it by either condoning or failing to speak out about the health risks of other products like glyphosate, fluoride, GM food and mercury . Corporations often conduct little if any research before their wares are released … what is required is often done in secret and the results are often kept from the public. Then they foist them upon the public without prior consent and often without our knowledge, as has been the case with GM food. We are not guinea pigs and it will only be when people like Fox and Harawira stand up and challenge them, and when we the public refuse to buy their wares, that any changes are going to come about. As for our media, having lost any last vestiges of ethics and honesty as they continue their corporate mergers … there is little point in listening to them any more.
Stand up folks and put a stop to their monopoly.
See our Corporation pages for more info & links, &/or search categories for further corporation articles (at left of any page). In particular I recommend you watch the doco on the Corporations page (scroll to bottom) called ‘The Corporation’. This explains what a corporation is and how it works. It will join dots for you in terms of what is currently happening in our country.
Please also consider liking our FB page &/or following our blog, and do spread the word on all the untruths we have been told!
NZ Govt taking ‘let them eat cake’ to a whole new level
This really takes the cake so to speak, bringing ‘let them eat cake’ to a whole new level! The Daily Blog reports on the reception a legally blind woman had from her case worker recently in Auckland. Firstly she says to her “you don’t look blind” then she pulls out a piece of paper, hands it to her, folds her arms and demands she read it and prove her wrong! These are the depths to which our government/corporate offices have sunk nowadays. Bonuses are earned (I’ve heard from a former WINZ worker) by those who manage to save the company funds.
There are humane workers at WINZ offices who respect people. But there are also many, unfortunately, like this poor specimen, who humiliate and denigrate their customers (forgetting that without their customers they would have no job themselves). These stories have been rolling out of late with the current homelessness crisis and people sleeping rough in the cities, or in their cars even. We’ve also heard stories of people with cancer and leukemia being told to look for work, the latter in particular, a man with two children to support, and at the time sick in his hospital bed.
White collar crime is responsible for far more tax dollars lost than benefit fraud
This attitude reflects the great disrespect our corporately biased system has for the lower income bracket particularly those without jobs and in this case, the disabled. White collar workers on the other hand, who defraud the system are treated very favourably, particularly by the justice system. Dr Lisa Marriott, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at Victoria University, has stated that:
“Benefit fraud cost New Zealand $22 million in 2010, or around $5 for each New Zealander. While it is difficult to get accurate figures for tax evasion, the Tax Justice Network estimates New Zealand missed out on more than $7.4 billion of tax revenue in 2011, or around $1,500 per New Zealander…
So the figures for tax evasion are phenomenal while they are relatively small for benefit fraud…”
On top of all this the corporate media makes much of the vilified beneficiary who cheats the tax payer of the said $5, whilst it seldom if ever mentions the white collar criminal who cheats the same for $1500. Indeed it quite blatantly misleads the NZ public with its failure to mention these stats, stirring up hatred and disinfo against the less fortunate in our midst.
Prime Minister Key who doesn’t believe we have a homeless problem
So much for justice and equity in our once prosperous welfare state. And let’s not forget, we once had full employment in this nation of ours. There was a job for everybody. And what happened to change that? It wasn’t the fault of people on benefits as the corporate media often subtly misleads us to believe. Let’s lay the blame squarely where it belongs…Rogernomics and the new neoliberal experiment … irresponsible governments that borrowed us into the big black hole we are now in. That has left an ever widening gap between rich and poor, and a crisis of homelessness that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Finally, keep in mind weare a corporation and corporations are about profits and not people.
See our Money/Banking pages for more info & links, &/or search categories for further related articles (at left of any page).
Please like our FB page &/or follow our blog (right of any page) and do spread the word on all the untruths we have been told! EnvirowatchRangitikei
Thanks to greed, poor planning and economic mis-management, we can kiss goodbye to dreams of home ownership and a quarter acre section for the kids to run around on. We now have people living in cars – unheard of before the economic reforms of the 1990’s.
New Zealand now has the highest housing prices in the world, next to Qatar!
How did we get here? These are a number of causes; (1) Supply and demand, (2) Land restrictions under UN inspired initiatives like Agenda 21 and now C40, (3) Foreign banks creating NZ’s money, and (4) Economic mismanagement.
(1 and 2) The demand for land out-stripping supply. The Auckland City Council has been restricting the amount of land that can be built on. Our media haven’t reported on this – but in December the Auckland City Council signed up to the C40 Low Carbon City Group, a group of councils…
Thank you to NZreport for this post. Divulging some of Key’s lesser known pursuits here, but then if you serve the people he does, I expect you don’t have a lot of choice about some of your, should we say, ‘recreational’ interests? These groups are very real and their activities highly questionable to say the very least. And no it is not conspiracy theory what they do, it is well documented by both researchers and by people who escaped their clutches. My father was a Freemason – he left when he learned the truth about the organization. They don’t hear the real agenda until they reach the 33rd degree. EnvirowatchRangitikei
The link I referred to in a previous post about whether or not John Key is insider trading & profits from NZ’s indebtedness … well it’s been found (re named). Thanks to the author who spotted my Youtube comment about it. So here it is with a different title. Part two to come shortly also. EnvirowatchRangitikei
Whether by design, omission or a faulty memory John Key and Gavin Walker gave incorrect information when talking about John Key and Andrew Krieger’s relationship since 1988 was impossible they must have given incorrect information about the period in which this took place. John Key and Andrew Krieger can only have worked toegether in 1987 thus putting John Key firmly in the traders chair on the other side of the telephone line to the Bankers Trust New York were Andrew Krieger was giving orders in what was to be the biggest attack on the New Zealand currency putting tens of thousands of New Zealand jobs and incomes at risk.
In late 1987 Andrew Krieger attacked the New Zealand dollar. He earned for the Bankers Trust bank the sum of $ 338 million in just a few days. This attack was so threatening to the dollar and the economy that the then Governor of the Reserve bank had to call the Bankers Trust bank in New York to stop the attack.
Is John Key benefiting from NZ debt? Does water flow downhill? Do birds fly? Do corporate flunkies lie? Yesterday NZReport had a link to an article with this headline, I saved it to cite it today in an article … and overnight it’s disappeared. No sign of it anywhere. Our corporate whore media has backtracked again.
Key, the PM who will be remembered for denying hungry kids school lunches
Nevertheless, I posted info some months back on the topic so it bears repeating, to remind folks just how corrupt their beloved PM & his Nat party are. They are systematically destroying the last vestiges of sovereignty, independence and prosperity we have, or should that be ‘had’? And don’t forget the recent lost $200 million debacle and the collapsed Portuguese bank … the ‘fail safe’ investment of Kiwisaver funds!
(The now defunct link http://nzreport.co.nz/video-is-john-key-inside-trading-with-new-zealands-debt/) EnvirowatchRangitikei
A few posts back we had a video of John Key speaking briefly on his Bank of America shares. Here is the extended version of that video in which we see public watchdog Penny Bright of Auckland questioning the Prime Minister in 2011 following a no response from her Official Information request. Speaking to a Grey Power public meeting in Papatoetoe in 2011 the Prime Minister had just explained that NZers (mums and dads, businesses, farms etc., not the NZ government/corporation) were in debt and 85 percent of that debt is owed to foreigners. He adds that no OECD country borrows a big percentage of their money from foreigners. Penny then asked him specifically to tell her exactly to whom NZ has become indebted since National came to power in 2008. Especially she asked, whether or not NZ has become indebted to the Bank of America or any institutions in connection with that bank. His body language clearly conveys that he has clearly been caught on the hop by these very pointed questions, especially given he hadn’t answered her OI request. Do watch the clip, it’s quite short and very enlightening!
Further we have an article here by Rolling Stone, “Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail” cited by Evelyn Gilbert of NZ’s aotearoaawiderperspective blog. Some very pertinent facts there about the Bank.
“The problem most people have in judging John Key and his role here in New Zealand and why he is doing what he is doing leaves a lot of people, even those who vote National, bewildered and confused and angry is that they don’t know about the way money is created, how he gained his wealth and what he has to do to keep it so I thought I’d give a couple of examples.
Here is number 1: John Key has most of his paper wealth in Bank of America which is by insiders considered the most corrupt banking entity in the world and that alone gives him a huge conflict of interest!
And this is what Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone Magazine has to say about the Bank:
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they’ll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world’s worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt’s funeral…”
Here Vinny Eastwood speaks with Penny Bright, Evelyn Gilbert (aotearoaawiderperspective blogger) and Iain Parker, Financial Systems Researcher.
Vinny Eastwood “This is by the far the most important interview to watch BEFORE the New Zealand election., The truth about John Key will make your jaw drop!
Remember how your government/corporation recently gambled away $200 million of Kiwisaver funds & lost it in a ‘fail safe’ investment with a Portuguese bank? Haven’t heard anything of that since have we, as in what’s to be done about it? Nobody held to account? Well here is an exposé that will make you think seriously about where you put your money. Check out our Money Trail/Banking pages. This is about white collar crime, the crime that’s seldom mentioned in mainstream media, whilst petty crime makes the headlines. Focusing on the theft of minor sums of money and so forth keeps our eyes off the breathtaking theft of the banking fraternity and their criminal ilk. EnvirowatchRangitikei
The reason you only hear about petty crime in the mainstream media [photo credit anonews]
Vinny Eastwood Exposes Financial Fraud
Known around the world for exposing the Savings & Loans scandal in the 80’s, Bill Black is responsible for the imprisonment of over 1000 corrupt bankers and on the show today he informs us how the global financial system is essentially a giant fraud machine, built, fueled and operated by some of the worst con artists, liars and psychopathic criminals that have ever existed on the planet!
SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA! WWW.THEVINNYEASTWOODSHOW.COM
GUESTS: William K. Black & Evelyn Gilbert http://www.aotearoaawiderperspective.com
Known around the world for exposing the Savings & Loans scandal in the 80’s, Bill Black is responsible for the imprisonment of over 1000 corrupt bankers and on the show today he informs us how the global financial system is essentially a giant fraud machine, built, fueled and operated by some of the worst con artists, liars and psychopathic criminals that have ever existed on the planet!
With the recent release of the Panama papers and New Zealand’s role in global off-shore tax havens, Kiwi blogger Evelyn Gilbert Joins in the second hour to ask some specific questions about New Zealand’s former Wall Street derivatives trader and now Prime Minister, John Key.
Those of us who remember our loved ones who either died in war, or who returned, ever to live with the horrific memories of war, we do so from deep respect. We are not glorifying war. These men and women were of a very unique breed. They went in love, desiring to defend their loved ones, us, and their beloved countries. They never wanted war, they were caught up in events against which they had very little, if any, ability to influence. My uncle was so deeply affected by war he would weep when he remembered it. These men on return had no counselors to hear their trauma, they just got on with life and raising families, and buried their grief. They bore a great cost.
50 million lives lost in WW2 … “newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes” (Maj Gen Smedley Butler) – the senseless heartbreak of war.
War is a Racket – literally
Although every ANZAC we honour these our forbears, we also now know that these loved ones who truly did sacrifice their lives, were pawns in a much larger scheme of events. My father, who went off to WW II with his four brothers at the tender age of 17, said in his latter years that wars would never end because ‘wars make money’. Because our true histories are little known and because the media provides us with a very narrow slanted view, then it’s not widely known that the so-called mother country, Great Britain and the royal family deal in the arms trade. Yes they actually profit from wars. Major General Smedley Butler in his famous lecture: ‘War is a Racket’ clearly outlines whom war serves – the corporations. In the age old rationale of ‘defending democracy’ – the military are really defending the mother country’s rights to plunder resources. Hear his speech here.
So, as always, we need to follow the familiar money trail.
So called ‘Maori Wars’ were Actually Land Wars
Some of the lands confiscated in Aotearoa by Te Kooti Tango Whenua, The Land Taking Court
It’s little known that some of our own Maori soldiers returned from those World Wars to find their ancestral lands confiscated by the very government they fought for.
Those who read beyond those official histories we all heard in school (who know that ‘Maori Wars’ and ‘Indian Wars’ were actually ‘Land Wars’) will also be aware of the role of the Rothschild family in fomenting and profiteering from wars for hundreds of years, boasting even of funding both sides. These people, incredible as it sounds to real human beings, are dealing in blood. (The following video is the short 12 min version of ‘War is a Racket’, the longer one is found at this link).
The death toll from WWII was over 50 million lives.
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply”…Nathan Mayer Rothschild
“If my sons did not want wars, there would be none”… Mrs Rothschild
Our loved ones were simply pawns.
Nevertheless, again, we honour the fact that our loved ones went honourably and served their beloved countries and peoples. If you want to get angry at the so called ‘celebration’ of war, please direct this not at our commemorations, but at these other people, the profiteers, who have blood on their hands. Blood that one day, they will have to answer for.
When your children are old enough, teach them the true histories, tell them how it really was and still is. We want wars to stop, but the truth needs to be told about the origins of those wars. You will have to uncover those histories for yourselves because mainstream media is not about to. They guard this dirty little secret well.
Remember people, this is your government (really a corporation) that just lost $200 million of your hard earned Kiwisaver funds to a collapsed Portuguese ‘fail safe’ bank! Do you really still trust them! EnvirowatchRangitikei
Bernard Hickey says the quiet removal of the guarantee for Kiwibank savers should remind all savers about the lack of a deposit guarantee and prompt regulators and the industry to run a public education campaign about NZ”s lack of a deposit guarantee.
Did you know that your money in a term deposit in a bank is not guaranteed by the Government?
Those in the know are aware that there is no Government guarantee, but it turns out most regular people, and certainly most term depositors, either still think there’s a guarantee, or think there’s always has been one.
New Zealand briefly had a government guarantee for retail bank deposits from October 2008 to December 2011. It was introduced at the worst point in the Global Financial Crisis to stop a run of deposits across the Tasman to the banks’ parents in Australia, where the Kevin Rudd Government offered a guarantee for depositors there.
It was quietly dropped once global markets had settled down and was replaced by a system called ‘Open Bank Resolution’. This means there is no Government guarantee and if a bank was to fail, the Reserve Bank would shut it down and manage a capital restructure overnight so that it could re-open the next day. One way a bank’s capital could be restructured by the Reserve Bank is through a ‘hair-cut’ for depositors. Essentially, the Reserve Bank would slice a certain percentage – say 10% – off the value of term deposits to allow the bank to re-open with enough capital to survive.
Christine Lagarde, CEO of IMF [SOURCE]For those of us who are awake to the hidden agenda that is going down world wide, this statement from Christine Lagarde of the IMF comes as no surprise really. We already know for instance that the banking fraternity (including the British royal family) profits greatly from wars that have been fomented for centuries by the Rothschilds, who gaily and shamelessly profiteer by funding both sides and boast about it.
Shamelessly too in terms of who they expunge from the planet be they innocent children or whomever. As Madeleine Albright said in her infamous statement ‘it is worth it’ – worth it to kill and maim 500,000 innocent Iraqi kids. And shameless in terms of the military whom they experiment on endlessly, casting them aside when their usefulness has come to an end. As Major General Smedley Butler informed us decades ago … ‘war is a racket’. These are the kinds of people who can make statements like the above about their banking activity, with ne’er the bat of an eyelid, their consciences (if ever they did have one) long hardened to the fact that this is actually not right. This is the nature of corporations – they are soulless – psychopathic entities, totally void of empathy.
We have here the outright admission though (for those who are too blind to have seen all previous pointers to this) that they actually profit from economic recession. That they in fact desirerecession. They desirewars. Now how warped and twisted is that? To want to unleash poverty and death upon one’s fellow human beings? Particularlyupon children. Note, they were not doing so well in 2006 and 7 says Lagarde, that was put right for them, or perhaps by them, with the 2008 recession.
“Financial panics are scientifically created”
Congressman Charles Lindbergh of Minnesota (1920)
It is true what was stated long ago by successive prominent people in government … Willard Cantelon lists many of their statements in ‘The Day the Dollar Dies’ (1973) – a warning to all:
“I’m afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money, and they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of the government and hold in the hollow of their hands, the destiny of the people”
Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of England’s Exchequer (1924)
“The Governor of the Bank of England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone the government can obtain money”
Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president of the Inst of Bankers (1924)
“The government … in the matters of finance was to leave the money power supreme and unquestioned”
Lord Gladstone, Chancellor of Britain’s Exchequer (1852)
“He who controls the money of a nation controls the nation”
US President James Garfield (1881)
“You see, gentlemen, who owns the United States”
Vice-President John Garner (1933) (referring to international bankers)
“Give me control over a nation’s economy, and I care not who writes its laws”
Meyer Amschel Rothschild
“Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history”
Karl Marx
Convinced?
And when these scientifically created panics happen, we know from history that many folk commit suicide. Peoples’ hard earned life savings are pitched straight down the proverbial drain … more accurately … straight into a banker’s pockets. And these vermin continue to escape penalty, with blood on their hands.
When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted “as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected“, the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public’s surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.
But why the surprise?
As the below transcript from a April 2012 interview given by Lagarde to the Wharton school …, none other than IMF president Lagarde herself admitted that for the IMF to “thrive”, the world has to “goes downhill“, and that the IMF “to be sustainable” it needs to be “very in touch with our client base.”
She added that “when the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise”
It goes without saying that Lagarde’s sole prerogative as the managing director of the IMF is to make sure it “does well.”
She concluded by saying that “we need to be able to invent and reinvent ourselves in many ways.” One such client-facing “reinvention” just happened to be caught on tape.
Here is the key section:
Knowledge@Wharton: Of all the things that you do here, what are you most passionate about? What would you really like to make sure happens? It could be a small thing, it could be a large thing. What is it that really has your heart?
Lagarde: That’s complicated. I think it’s this issue of relevance … that is of real concern to me. You see, this is a very fascinating institution because it’s completely counter-cyclical. When the world around the IMF goes downhill,
When our PM was elected, well pre election particularly, he was the smiling new guy on the block who took the young Maori girl to Waitangi that year – a great publicity stunt, currying favour with Maori. I’ve read recently the young woman who accompanied him to Waitangi now sees clearly through his motive. With regrets perhaps? We’ve seen now how much he really respects indigenous interests – they don’t go down to well in the corporate world & Key is a banker. Then we’ve all heard the rumour put out that he donates some/all (?) of his PM salary away because of his wealth from his banking career – turns out that is likely myth not fact as no concrete proof has been forthcoming yet. People have asked. Were it factual he could give it to the school lunch cause, and he’s made it clear that’s not going to happen. Anyway there were many clearly sucked in by his smiling clean image who are now severely disillusioned. The image he promoted was ‘working for NZ’ which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Here in this article that thought is teased out a bit with the claim he is working for the 1%.
The wealthy. All escaping the carnage they’ve created abroad, John’s happy for them to hide out here with their wealth, offering great corporate tax breaks, the new Switzerland, whilst our own smaller biz people go the harder route. Of course this behaviour’s all old hat now the TPPA deal’s been signed by yours truly who also says he’s forging ahead regardless, ratified or not, definitely borne out by the fascist tactics employed in his recent roadshow ‘hearing’ what the people think aka telling us what they plan to do, the familiar tune we’re hearing up and down the country these days. We are asked our opinion after the fact, given two ticky boxes to choose from and expected to believe we’ve ‘had a say’! (I feel a Tui ad coming on). By all accounts folks who tried to raise meaningful discussion were talked down.
The article’s from the Standard and cites Fran O’Sullivan’s thoughts on the matter, clearly confirming whom our PM is working for.
Last month Key was named by National Business Review’s 2008 Rich List as one of New Zealand’s richest men, with a personal worth of $50m.
Key lives in an $8m Auckland mansion with wife Bronagh and their children Stephie and Max. He also owns property in Wellington and Omaha, a London apartment and a $4.5m holiday home in Hawaii.Stuff.co.nz 10/08/08
EnvirowatchRangitikei
[PHOTO Credit – header: The Green Party]
Key wants to turn New Zealand into a haven for the 1%
There was an interesting article by Fran O’Sullivan in last weekend’s Herald about John Key’s ambitions for New Zealand. O’Sullivan may not be liked by some lefties but she writes perceptively and provides insight into National Party thinking that no other journalist does.
The headline suggests that Key wants to make New Zealand the Switzerland of the South but a closer reading shows that he does not want to make it a place where everyone is prosperous, educated and healthy. Rather he wants to make New Zealand a bolt hole for the overseas rich.
“John Key is positioning New Zealand as an Asia-Pacific “Switzerland” – a beautiful and wealthy bolthole for high net-worthers seeking to escape from an unstable world.
Key believes that free-flowing terrorism is here to stay. To the Prime Minister, this simply makes New Zealand more attractive and will result in more high net-worth consumers wanting to come here – a theme he is developing in business briefings.
There is another strand to this developing Key mantra.
He is frankly unapologetic about the massive increase in Auckland residential property values, which has resulted in many established Aucklanders becoming relatively rich, but younger people being locked out of the market. It is a trend which is not going to stop anytime soon, given the immigration figures.”
So Key wants to attract more wealthy people to New Zealand as the rest of the world implodes.
How the corporations get away with murder. They know all the loop holes, they have well paid lawyers, they do pretty much what they like and who has the power or the funds to argue with them? Time and again the cause is dropped because it’s ‘not cost effective’ to argue with them in court. Their bank accounts appear bottomless, not surprising given the profits they accrue. These entities are nearing tyrannical proportions.
And here we have them scamming us by avoiding tax. On top of that our top echelons pay peanuts for tax, John Key for instance, pays a mere 2.8% tax whilst the real workers pay 28%! How is this fair? It’s not.
Next time you hear folks bashing beneficiaries for their hand outs and blaming them for our debt, point them here to these stats. What we didn’t learn in economics lectures is that a poor class is essential to capitalism – they supply a cheap labour force and the benefit system is a safety net that keeps it all in place, giving it all a human face. There are some of us still alive who remember the days of full employment when we all had jobs and as a consequence warm homes and food enough for our families. Unemployment began when previous governments borrowed us down the river and into long term unrepayable debt. The poor of course are conveniently blamed for this and told to tighten their belts, while little of that is going on in the upper ranks. Hence the aforementioned pathetically small income tax these leaches pay on their immorally large salaries. Or should we say – ‘hand-outs’? Unless you call ‘working’ for the Stock Exchange work.
A picture is worth a thousand words
EnvirowatchRangitikei
Top multinationals pay almost no tax in New Zealand
Matt Nippert – NZ Herald
A major Herald investigation has found the 20 multinational companies most aggressive in shifting profits out of New Zealand overall paid virtually no income tax, despite recording nearly $10 billion in annual sales to Kiwi consumers.
The analysis of financial information of more than 100 multinational corporations and their New Zealand subsidiaries showed that, had the New Zealand branches of these 20 firms reported profits at the same healthy rate as their parents, their combined income tax bill would have been nearly $490 million.
The companies in question, including Facebook, Google, Pfizer and Pernod Ricard, said they followed New Zealand laws and differences in profitability between its New Zealand operations and elsewhere were the results of different business models.
United Future leader Peter Dunne, who was Minister of Revenue from 2005 to 2013, said that experience meant he was not altogether surprised by the disclosures in the Herald.
Determining what share of income large companies should be taxed for, in what country was “becoming more and more impossible”, he said. Finding a way forward was a matter of urgency.
SOURCE: “Every working American is required to pay income taxes, but American companies get away with paying zero…
This year, the IRS collected roughly $1.4 trillion from U.S. taxpayers on April 15. Even individuals exempt from the federal income tax are subject to payroll taxes – and even the 14% exempt from both still must pay a sales tax.
A pertinent reminder with ANZAC coming up soon. My late father when in his 80s, who fought in WW2 as cannon fodder for these low life families who foment wars for profits (the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers) – he told us wars would never end because they make money. As a very young 17 year old he set off to serve his country, along with his four brothers, oblivious to the real agenda of the powers that be. Check out the article link below and links to other posts also below.
All wars are pre-arranged by this secret Ruling Cabal which is best defined as the circle of top world Banksters and industrialist run out of the City of London Financial District, a separate country like the Vatican with its own ambassadors and police. These folks claim to be personally anointed by Lucifer himself and some have claimed to have personal alien or demon guides that provide protection and counsel. Thus all wars are Bankster wars and appear to be demonically inspired. Some experts have discovered a strong association with secret esoteric “super-masonic” occult groups which are luciferian based and this Ruling Cabal. Others have discovered a long term association with these Ruling Cabal members and alien or ET entities, and believe these cabal members are actually infected with alien/ET demonic parasites who demand and promote mass death and destruction upon the Earth once they gain control over the Cabal member who has lost his soul or been “soul-snatched”. Some researchers have labeled this Ruling Cabal Babylonian Zionism, or the “Synagogue of satan” and claim that it’s wealth and power is based on the use of “Babylonian Money-Magick” which is the use of fiat money lent at pernicious usury in order to create massive debt slavery, massive asset stripping and provide complete but hidden control. Others attribute it power to the anointing of Lucifer and their use of the evil “black arts” which include deception, slight of hand and human sacrifice. If the cabal can issue or print all the money it needs, it can buy up almost every single politician it wants as long as it keeps the effects of all the excess money mitigated to prevent complete collapse of the monetary system. Of course experts know that the creation of the US Petro Dollar which required all oil sales to be made in money converted to US dollars first was a stop gap effort to delay reality until the Ruling Cabal could use America to subdue the whole world on the behalf of these City of London Bankster’s before the system eventually crashed. The reason why the US Dollar is now only worth only about 2 cents of what is was worth when it was originally issued is because the Federal Reserve Bank has been issuing more and more money to buy politicians and support their secret black operations designed to develop alien technology to keep complete control over “we the people” and this Ponzi system is eventually doomed to failure.
The following video clip is a classic by Michael Rivera of whatreallyhappened.com. It is 45 minutes long and most folks can get the main message which is very important in the first 5-10 minutes if time is limited. For those that have the time and want hard core specifics, the rest of this clip is perhaps the best description of how Banksters cause wars ever published.
This video was made in 2008 and made some very accurate predictions about Key’s role if he became PM. Many of them have happened. Voters take note.
An interesting document for you to see on this topic is the Opal File. Check it out. Nobody knows who wrote it but in light of its contents it’s not surprising they would want to remain anonymous. Together with this video it makes sense.
A plan here has been coming together for many years. A plan for global governance which our former PM Helen Clarke is working on at her UN job, featured in the magazine ‘Investigate’. We are given the illusion of choice, National or Labour plus now all the other parties in between. In reality Clarke and Key are simply different riders on the same horse that the global agenda folks intend to bring to heel. This is being brought into fruition by the New World Order, spoken of often by many particularly past and present US Presidents (just to prove it is not hoax material) first officially announced after the Gulf War (the one when the US Government infected their own military (‘guinea pigs’) with Gulf War Syndrome via vaccines. (Watch ‘Gulf War Syndrome: Killing our Own).
Hear the Presidents speak on their ‘New World Order’. It isn’t conspiracy.
The goal is well behind of course going by Clarke’s estimates. But events in local District Councils are certainly taking on a sinister and unpleasant overtone. Check those out in our ‘District Council’ pages and the research done by Dr Naomi Jacobs (links below).
Flier on world government from the Jehovah’s Witness ChurchJohn Key’s affinity with the US, watch … he is leading us down the same path
These two families, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, hang in the background and manipulate from behind the scenes. We’ve known (some of us at least) that they have also fomented wars for profit for eons, all about garnering profits for their own empire/s, and at the expense of all of us. Young lives lost in their profiteering wars, sent off, as were my father and four uncles, as pure cannon fodder as it were. And all the while these men, cherished and held dear by their loved ones at home, either died in combat, or came home traumatized forever, thinking it was for ‘King and country’.
All the while it was for these two evil families’ bank accounts. The story is so ‘out there’ it’s close to unbelievable. A morning’s research however will tell you it’s all quite true, it’s just that the information has been purposely kept from you … by those who also control and manipulate the media. So here we have an admirable advocate for you, turning the spotlight he was given, off of himself and onto these two murdering entities and making the most of the opportunity to give you a big hint about who is still manipulating world events….
Read on…
Jean-Claude Van Damme calls out Rothschild and Rockefeller on live TV
Van Damme was invited on the French show to speak about the US elections and commented on Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Vladimir Putin.
However, he quickly hijacked the narrative and went on to explain how the Rothschild and Rockefeller families control the politicians and run the world from behind the scenes…
thefreethoughtproject.com Matt Agorist
After opening a trust company in Reno, Nev., Rothschild & Co. began ushering the massive fortunes of the world’s most wealthy individuals out of typical tax havens, and into the Rothschild run U.S. trusts, which are exempt from the international reporting requirements.
The Rothschild banking dynasty is a family line that has been accused of pulling the political strings of many different governments through their control of various economic systems throughout the world.
Historically, there is ample evidence to show that the family has used insider trading to bilk money from both private and public funds.
During the Battle of Waterloo in the Napoleonic wars, Nathan Rothschild was responsible for one of the oldest cases of “insider trading,” which led to the Rothschild family robbing a whole nation blind. In 1815 when the battle of Waterloo took place, there were no quick methods of communication like we have today so messengers were used for communication in times of war. The Rothschild’s took advantage of this by having spies on the frontlines of the battle who would return information to the family faster than the messengers used by the military…
During the Battle of Waterloo in the Napoleonic wars, Nathan Rothschild was responsible for one of the oldest cases of “insider trading,” which led to the Rothschild family robbing a whole nation blind…. [Photo Credit: Wikipedia]
A reminder here of the liberties our District Councils are taking with your money, in this case, to the extent of taking it from your bank, without your consent!
Go to the link at the top there to read the article.
“Mangawhai ratepayers and residents face massive rates rates increases, initially proposed at +1800% to raise money for a “sewerage scheme” it turns out that something much more sinister and far smellier is in the works.
No democracy, no accountability, no rights and no access to justice, worst case scenario right? Well how about the disputed rates payments that are before the high court being stolen directly from citizens bank accounts?
So much stolen that you can’t even make your next mortgage payement?
This might be one of the most important cases in recent New Zealand local government and yet the media are completely ignoring it and leaving those in this community to fight for themselves.
Luckily, people like Alan Preston and chairman of The Mangawhai Residents And Ratepayers Association Bruce Rogan are there to give light to this very important issue!”
At the same time as this news item we’ve had the case of the blown$200 mill … lost because the NZ Government (aka corporation) loaned it with the help of Goldman Sachs, to a Portuguese fail-safe Bank that subsequently collapsed. No wonder they’re chasing up $29.3 mill. How many folks I wonder have noticed this news item, as in the $200 mill that’s down the gurgler? And if they consider it prudent to leave their money in KiwiSaver? On the larger scale check out the money borrowed under John Key’s watch. And check out how he made his millions. He’s certainly rubbed shoulders with the Goldman Sachs peeps. Better still, check out the links at the end to a less superficial look at how he made his millions.
Tens of thousands of workers are missing millions of dollars from their KiwiSaver accounts because their employers have failed to either pass on payments docked from their pay, or pay their own employer contributions.
Figures obtained by RNZ News show Inland Revenue is chasing thousands of employers for $29.3 million in outstanding payments and penalties that have accumulated since the retirement savings scheme was launched in 2007.
At the end of June 2015, 1663 employers had failed to pass on $15.3m in KiwiSaver payments deducted from their employees’ own salaries to the IRD.
These deductions were government guaranteed so workers would eventually get the money.
But since 2007, 2210 employers had failed to pay $10.6m in KiwiSaver contributions to 46,154 employees.
Businesses are legally required to pay 3 percent of an employee’s gross salary towards their KiwiSaver.
IRD collections manager David Udy said the vast majority of the businesses that had failed to pay were small and employed between three and five staff.
” … during my time on council … I was placed under pressure to toe the line and deny there was a [pollution] problem” Former HDC Councillor Anne Hunt
Former Horowhenua District Councillor Anne Hunt, who is backing the claims made by both Councillors Campbell and Feyen (see links at bottom of page) regarding the HDC’s role in pollution of Horowhenua’s waterways, has revealed that on two occasions they as Councillors were given a clear message by Mayor Brendan Duffy that they were to “toe the line and deny pollution by the Council”. The first of those occasions concerning a 2008 visit by Green Party Co-Leader Russel Norman is addressed here, the second which relates to the pollution of Shannon’s waterways, will be covered in another post.
Mrs Hunt has previously stated on Maori Television in a documentary about the pollution of Lake Horowhenua that HDC is its “worst polluter” and she still stands by this statement (see video at 3.56 minutes).
Dr Russel Norman’s Visit in 2008
Mrs Hunt described an occasion in 2008 when Dr Russel Norman came to Levin to speak with HDC’s Mayor, CEO and representatives about the pollution of Lake Horowhenua by Levin’s nearby waste water treatment plant. At a Council workshop on the day prior, they were told, said Mrs Hunt, that TV3 was coming up to interview the CEO David Ward. Cr Leigh McMeeken suggested they should all stand around him as a show of support. She describes the workshop:
“We were all sitting around the council table, and Brendan [Mayor Duffy] asked each councillor individually to speak to this and voice their support [of the CEO’s stance]… finally coming around to glare at me. I felt most uncomfortable and managed to mumble a non-committal answer. But the message was clear that I was not to step out of line. The Mayor and every other councillor supported the staff position on this, and agreed that Dr Norman was simply political point scoring”.
Put simply, Mrs Hunt says they knew they were to deny that their Council was polluting the lake.
Dr Russel Norman standing by Lake Horowhenua on his visit to HDC in 2008 – he correctly concludes the lake was contaminated with E.coli [Photo Credit: Green Party]During his visit Dr Norman was given the opportunity to fly over the lake and take photographs. It was not until a couple of months later that he was proven right by Horizons official tests (3 Oct 08 Manawatu Standard) about the sewage pollution when samples showed high levels of E coli, confirming faecal contamination.
Aerial photograph by Dr Norman showed groundwater from earthworks at the plant was pouring into the lake and creating a plume of dirtier lake water
Dr Norman’s Conclusions on the Sewage Contamination
Dr Norman concluded there was absolutely no doubt sewage was seeping into the lake and said it was turning out to be one of NZ’s worst sewage disasters in years. Official tests found high levels of E.coli between council sewage ponds and Lake Horowhenua. He commented that the HDC had a history of resource consent breaches including a then recent court appearance regarding Shannon’s sewage ponds. Mayor Brendan Duffy and CEO David Ward he said, have constantly downplayed risks, with Mayor Duffy calling any critics of his waste disposal practices ‘ill-informed’. The council had given priority he said to a $10.4 mill council building over proper waste treatment.
The new Council building … “an edifice to stupidity” – Cr Michael Feyen
The Sewage Pollution of Lake Horowhenua was FACT
This has been an abbreviated revision of Dr Norman’s conclusions. Fuller coverage will be the subject of a later post. It serves here in its brevity to illustrate that in spite of HDC denials, the pollution of Lake Horowhenua by sewage was factual, as official tests later proved. And the point of this post being to endorse the actions of Mr Andrews (the 70 year old Shannon environmentalist who was recently assaulted at his home by intruders) and Crs Ross Campbell and Michael Feyen, in endeavouring to film what appears to be deliberate pollution by the HDC, bringing it to the notice of the public. A public that elected these representatives to manage their public resources, prudently and not negligently.
Particularly, it exposes, thanks to Mrs Hunt, the clearly unethical tactics employed by the HDC in coercing its Councillors to think and ‘vote’ a certain way.
You have a situation here where your Councillors that you vote for on election day, the people whom you are expecting to represent your views when important decisions are made at your local District Council … they are actually being told how to vote … and that is according to the directive of the CEO.
Is this democratic?
Clearly not.
What we have here it seems, is an illusion of democracy. Behind those closed doors Councillors are not permitted to represent you … their hands are tied. Clearly there have been three Councillors here who were willing to speak the truth … at great cost to themselves. For that I applaud them.
“When we tolerate what we know to be wrong–when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened–when we fail to speak up and speak out–we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice”. – Robert Francis Kennedy
Finally, bear in mind that your local District Councils are registered on Dun and Bradstreet’s website as companies. (Check this out for yourself). A company is:
“… anyformalbusinessentityforprofitwhichmay be a corporation, a partnership,association or individual proprietorship…” SOURCE
So we need to be asking ourselves, to whom do our Councils (that are really companies) owe their allegiance? To you the ratepayer/citizen? Or to corporate/company interests, given they exist ‘for profit’? Does this not explain a few anomalies?
On a final note, these courageous Councillors who have put their heads above the parapet and spoken truth deserve our thanks. Do consider emailing them in that regard, or leave a comment here. And the same goes for the local residents, in particular Mr Andrews, who have also stood up and been counted.
EnvirowatchRangitikei
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I seem to have gained quite a few new readers since the last elections. For this I am very grateful!I thought I would celebrate this with a repost of two animation videos which taught me a great deal about our money system.
Max Keiser, the other day, stated: We don’t live in a Capitalist system which is based on savings and investing those savings in wealth producing enterprises (his version of Capitalism). We live in a Debtism system, a system based on fiat money creation leveraged and re-hypothicated time time and again and used to buy up real world wealth transferring that wealth from the 99% to the 1%.
You might think that this is just some far fetched conspiracy theory but here is what the bank of England has to say about it’s money creation process:
Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in…
“You delivered tax cuts the country couldn’t afford and leave us $120 billion in debt, a superannuation crisis, crippling student loans and a generation locked out of home ownership” Gareth Hughes, Green Party
Our country NZ that we like to think of as being a democracy, technically has been one in name only for quite some time now. We are actually a corporation, listed on the Security and Exchange Commission website (SEC) as such, with the Queen as the listed owner. Indeed our local District Councils are also companies, listed on the Dun and Bradstreet website. Check it out. A company is ‘any formal business entity for profit which may be a corporation, a partnership or individual proprietorship’.
This has ramifications for how they both function. If corporations and companies have profits for shareholders as their primary concern, then how can they be true to democratic aspirations, or truly fulfill that function? We’ve already been seeing the outworking of this incompatibility for quite some time now. Constantly corporate interests are overriding any care for the environment, in spite of Horizons and District Councils’ much touted mantra of ‘sustainable development’. Big business aka corporations are not interested in cleaning up the damage they inflict and they hold little interest in preserving the environment. At least not beyond lip service anyway. They’re claiming ownership of our water supplies to sell off shore for profit, and charging local farmers far higher prices to tend to our own agricultural concerns. In our own district corporate interests are wrecking our roads and trashing our waterways with our own local Rangitikei District Council turning a blind eye and on loading the expense to the rate payers. Sustainable?
So here is a scathing address to John Key on the state of our nation by Gareth Hughes of the Green Party at the opening of Parliament. Laid bare, the facts are astonishing … he speaks truth …
Homelessness is a growing problem in NZ, and the government continues to sell off our state housing stock, the former pride of our [once] Welfare StateOther insights included:
Once you attacked the nanny state of efficient lightbulbs but then presided over the most wide reaching mass surveillance state in our country’s history
Our most poll-driven PM ever, yet after all these years we still don’t know what you stand for
Scientists have been ridiculed and silenced and NGOs have had their funding and voice cut
You delivered tax cuts the country couldn’t afford and leave $120 billion in debt, a superannuation crisis, crippling student loans and a generation locked out of home ownership.
After selling our assets you are now selling out our sovereignty to corporates and the Hollywood industrial complex
You grew up in a state house but now that you’re on the 9th floor you’re even selling them too
“The Prime Minister earns $428,000 from his PM’s salary along with this [last] year’s [2015] $5,000,000 increase in his wealth (according to NBR’s rich list) which gives him a total income of $5,428,000. On this total income he pays just $132,160 in income tax and approximately $21,400 in GST giving a total tax of $153,560 or 2.8% of income” The Daily Blog
There’s a tale that’s always been out there saying John Key gives all of his salary away … it would seem. I’ve since heard he only donates some to charity … not all, and he won’t say how much or to whom. I certainly heard early in the piece that he donated all … I’m now very skeptical about that. Here’s what one blogger’s research turned up ….
“After talking to a person from his office here is the best info I can get. His pay goes into his bank account. He does give money to charity but doesn’t keep detailed records of how much. He doesn’t want to say what charities or provide a ballpark figure of what proportion of his pm pay he gives.” The blogger concludes, probably quite correctly, it is an “Urban myth!!!”
Anyway, all that aside, there being no proof and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see any, here is an interesting article about the tax rate he pays. I think it’s very unfair quite frankly and I’m sure most will. Okay most will justify an extra large salary to go with the position of PM, however, who can possibly justify the piddly tax rate he or any other politician pays? While we on the lower income scale are urged to tighten our belts, on the other hand, the wealthy spend extravagantly. A mere 10% of New Zealand owns 52% of the nation’s wealth.
Take a look at this President, Jose Mujica of Uruguay. He drives a Volkswagen and lives very frugally. He really does give away 90% of his income and leaves himself with the equivalent of an average Uruguayan wage. Our politicians could definitely take a leaf out of his book. Seeing these salaries and the pittance in tax they pay, small wonder we are so in debt as a country.
President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, dubbed ‘the world’s poorest president’
And please don’t blame the beneficiaries, I recall an era when there was no unemployment … everybody had a job and everybody wanted to work. The fault lies folks with our previous governments who borrowed us into this big black hole we’re in. Politicians have a nifty knack of shifting the blame onto the folks they pledge to serve. Well the folks they are supposed to be serving.
“The radical restructuring programme of the 1984–1990 Labour government, followed by National’s Employment Contracts Act 1991 led to a steep fall in union membership and a rapid rise in inequality. The top 1% more than doubled their portion of available income by 1998, reaching a peak of 13.8 percent in 1999″. Bryan Bruce
I have at times in my life worked two jobs, when on a low income, only to be taxed at 33 cents in the dollar for the second. This makes me even more livid seeing this. You’ll see here Key pays a mere 2.8% compared to the ‘peasants’ who are taxed an outrageous 28%!! Left with barely enough to live on. What do you think?
EnvirowatchRangitikei
John Key, NZ’s PM (Photo credit: The Daily Blog)
How much tax does John Key pay compared to a minimum wage worker??
The Daily Blog By John Minto
“Yesterday I did some calculations to find out what tax John Key pays compared to a worker on the minimum wage. And I put out this media release for the Mana Movement:
MANA Movement Economic Justice spokesperson John Minto is calling for a radical overhaul of New Zealand’s taxation system with calculations showing that a minimum wage worker pays a ten times higher tax rate than the Prime Minister.
Minimum wage worker 28% tax
Prime Minister 2.8% tax
The minimum wage worker on 40 hours per week earns $29,640 and pays $4,207 in income tax and $4,149.60 in GST giving a total tax of $8,356.60 or 28% of income.
On the other hand the Prime Minister earns $428,000 from his PM’s salary along with this year’s $5,000,000 increase in his wealth (according to NBR’s rich list) which gives him a total income of $5,428,000. On this total income he pays just $132,160 in income tax and approximately $21,400 in GST giving a total tax of $153,560 or 2.8% of income.
This is a national embarrassment. Those least able to pay are under a heavy tax burden while the super-rich pay peanuts……”
A few posts back we had a video of John Key speaking briefly on his Bank of America shares. Here is the extended version of that video in which we see public watchdog Penny Bright of Auckland questioning the Prime Minister in 2011 following a no response from her Official Information request. Speaking to a Grey Power public meeting in Papatoetoe in 2011 the Prime Minister had just explained that NZers (mums and dads, businesses, farms etc., not the NZ government/corporation) were in debt and 85 percent of that debt is owed to foreigners. He adds that no OECD country borrows a big percentage of their money from foreigners. Penny then asked him specifically to tell her exactly to whom NZ has become indebted since National came to power in 2008. Especially she asked, whether or not NZ has become indebted to the Bank of America or any institutions in connection with that bank. His body language clearly conveys that he has clearly been caught on the hop by these very pointed questions, especially given he hadn’t answered her OI request.
Do watch this, it’s quite short and very enlightening!
Further we have an article here by Rolling Stone, “Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail” cited by Evelyn Gilbert of NZ’s aotearoaawiderperspective blog. Some very pertinent facts there about the Bank.
“The problem most people have in judging John Key and his role here in New Zealand and why he is doing what he is doing leaves a lot of people, even those who vote National, bewildered and confused and angry is that they don’t know about the way money is created, how he gained his wealth and what he has to do to keep it so I thought I’d give a couple of examples.
Here is number 1: John Key has most of his paper wealth in Bank of America which is by insiders considered the most corrupt banking entity in the world and that alone gives him a huge conflict of interest!
And this is what Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone Magazine has to say about the Bank:
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they’ll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world’s worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt’s funeral…”
Here Vinny Eastwood speaks with Penny Bright, Evelyn Gilbert (aotearoaawiderperspective blogger) and Iain Parker, Financial Systems Researcher.
Vinny Eastwood “This is by the far the most important interview to watch BEFORE the New Zealand election., The truth about John Key will make your jaw drop!
newshub.co.nz Although the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is being signed today, there’s still a long way to go before it becomes set in stone.
Auckland University Professor of Law Jane Kelsey an ardent opponent of the deal says it’s important that protesters keep letting the Government know they are unhappy with it.
“The Government has turned a deaf ear not just to the analytical work that we’ve done, but to the views of people throughout the country,” Dr Kelsey told the Paul Henry programme this morning. “We’ve had big protests, as you know, peaceful protests, family-friendly protests throughout the country over the last couple of years… people saying again ‘Don’t sign, we don’t want this deal’.”
As a small country, New Zealand’s fate will be particularly influenced by the deal, she says.
“For us it does make a difference and from what I hear from people internationally, the opposition in New Zealand is the strongest of anywhere.”
And even though pen is being put to paper today, there is still a lot more work to be done before the deal is pushed through.
“What the Government is going to sign today, and it will sign it no matter what people say, is not going to be the end of the deal because the current text cannot get through the US Congress,” says Dr Kelsey.
“It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich—so few, you could fit them all on a single coach” … Mark Goldring, Oxfam Great Britain
This is absolute truth. Something is seriously wrong with our world when this is the state of affairs. Follow the money trail couldn’t be truer in this instance … follow the trail of the fraudulent banking industry. Your home you are paying off you will pay, it’s said, something like twice over when you tally up the interest these sharks charge you.
A Kiwi borrower buying a median-priced $416,000 home with a 20 per cent deposit on a floating 6 per cent interest rate would pay $717,965 over the life of a 30-year loan, according to Sorted’s mortgage calculator … NZ Herald
And to add insult to that injury the money they lend you is created on a computer screen, digital, and not solid gold or its equivalent in a vault out back. For more info on that visit our Money pages and/or watch the following short NZ clip (Kiwisin case you thought it was a problem ‘over there’ not here… as we do at times living down under).
Our histories and our money system are not what they seem. As the rich get richer and the poor, poorer, the cracks in this corrupt industry become more evident and obvious.
See here who owns the banks of the world (well most of them anyway) … the family infamous for this reasonably well known quote:
“Give me control over a nations currency, and I care not who makes its laws” – Baron M.A. Rothschild
The same family that boasted of funding both sides of wars to make money. The theme of the above quote by the way, is reiterated by many other notable people throughout history who cottoned on to the fraudulent activities of this group… for instance:
“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States” — Sen. Barry Goldwater (Rep. AR)
ROTHSCHILD OWNED & CONTROLLED BANKS (165 of them):
Afghanistan: Bank of Afghanistan
Albania: Bank of Albania
Algeria: Bank of Algeria
Argentina: Central Bank of Argentina
Armenia: Central Bank of Armenia
Aruba: Central Bank of Aruba
Australia: Reserve Bank of Australia
Austria: Austrian National Bank
Azerbaijan: Central Bank of Azerbaijan Republic
Bahamas: Central Bank of The Bahamas
Bahrain: Central Bank of Bahrain
Bangladesh: Bangladesh Bank
Barbados: Central Bank of Barbados
Belarus: National Bank of the Republic of Belarus
Belgium: National Bank of Belgium
Belize: Central Bank of Belize ….
Here is an article then that will tell you who owns the wealth … now that you know more about how they got it …
62 Richest People on Earth Own the Same Wealth as Half the World’s Population
From ecowatch.com:
“A mere 62 people own the same amount of wealth as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people, according to an Oxfam report published on Monday. This number has fallen dramatically from 388 as recently as 2010 and 80 last year.
The report, An Economy for the 1 Percent, found that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010.
“This 41 percent drop has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period,” Oxfam said. “Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion.”
“It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich—so few, you could fit them all on a single coach,” Mark Goldring, Oxfam Great Britain chief executive, said…..
Here is an insightful overview of our world histories, a video presentation by Abby Martin (SOURCE). It tellingly reveals just who is running our world. Historical overviews are particularly useful when joining dots … we can so easily get bogged down in detail that we don’t see the whole scope of events. As with the elephant analogy, we are like a person with a blindfold, trying to decipher just what the ‘beast’
Identifying the ‘beast’
is … feeling the tail, the legs, the trunk … wondering ‘what we have here’? Step back however, remove the blindfold, view the whole animal and ‘voila! An elephant.
So here, Martin reveals the ‘small’ and surprising detail about the number of military bases there are world wide and the true nature of the many military interventions we’ve witnessed … the carefully crafted ‘news’ that interpreted these world events for us (courtesy of our long time whore media) … identifying for us the ‘villains’ and the ‘heroes’ … all revealing a somewhat different story than what we thought about who is really running the show.
Who is really running the show?
The Empire Files
The creator of this video asks that you watch it on Youtube at their channel TheRealNews.
“Abby Martin debuts teleSUR’s The Empire Files exploring the U.S. Empire and its rise to world hegemony.
Further food for thought … ‘War is a Racket’ by Major General Smedley Butler
Listen to Major General Smedley Butler’s now well known speech on war, cited in Abby Martin’s video. This is a short 9 minute version. Or watch the full version (which is a full summary of his book, info below) at this link.
INFORMATION from the longer video posted on Miguel Ferreira‘s Youtube channel.
“Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a United
‘War is a racket’ Major General Smedley Butler
States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler is well known for having later become an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences, as well as exposing the Business Plot, an alleged plan to overthrow the U.S. government.
By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to other Fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot and the media ridiculed the allegations. A final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler’s testimony.
In 1935, Butler wrote a book entitled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular activist, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists, and church groups in the 1930s.
“This documentary will bring you to the backdoor of your favorite brand names – those that make some of us shopaholics.
Nation-State is just an illusion. We don’t belong to a race. We are all subservient to Corporations. If the slave yesterday was housed and fed, a more complex arrangement is implemented today wherein the slave can house and fed himself creating a perception of independence. Yet the control mechanism is still there by the amount of take-home pay he is receiving which is barely enough to stay alive to work for another day. He can’t afford to set long term goals…”
An enlightening three minute clip from the Positive Money YT channel on why we have inequality. It’s a mythical illusion that all can succeed under capitalism and a short review of the literature on that, looking beyond all the spin, will prove it. The documentation of the proponents of this monetary system tell us quite clearly that scarcity and the inability for all to succeed is what’s required for it to run successfully… for those at the top of the pyramid that is.
1. The current money system distributes money from the bottom 90% to the top 10%
Because 97% of the money in the UK is created by banks, someone must pay interest on nearly every pound in the circulation. This interest redistributes money from the bottom 90% of the population to the very top 10%. The bottom 90% of the UK pays more interest to banks that they ever receive from them, which results in a redistribution of income from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 10%. Collectively we pay £165m every day in interest on personal loans alone (not including mortgages), and a total of £213bn a year in interest on all our debts.
2. It transfers money from the real economy to the banks
Businesses are also in a similar situation. The ‘real’ (non-financial), productive economy needs money to function, but because all money is created as debt, that sector also has to pay interest to the banks in order to function. This means that the real-economy businesses – shops, offices, factories etc — end up subsidising the banking sector.
3. It transfers money from the rest of the UK to the City of London
Banks pay their staff out of their profits, which in large part comes from the interest they charge on loans. Because most of the high earning bank staff work in the City of London, this results in a geographic transfer of wealth from the UK to those working in the City of London.
4. The instability that the system causes means that temporary and low-paid jobs are insecure
When banks cause a financial crisis it leads to unemployment. It tends to be low-paid and temporary contract workers who are the first to get made redundant first, so that instability in the economy has a bigger effect on those on low incomes with insecure jobs.
5. High house prices increase inequality
When house prices are pushed up by banks creating money, those on low incomes suffer the most. People on low incomes often can’t get a mortgage big enough to buy a house, so they don’t benefit from the rise in house prices. Meanwhile, those who can get access to mortgages can buy multiple houses for buy-to-let and benefit from artificial inflation in house prices. Younger people also lose out, as the cost of buying their first house swallows an ever larger amount of their income, while older and retired people who own houses benefit. This all increases inequality across different income groups and between the young and old.
Our pretend government aka corporation is borrowing $27 mill a day to keep us afloat, and has spent $6.2 mill on a house that is double the value of surrounding houses. It’s not a house it’s a mansion fit for a king. Our corporation is also flogging off our state housing, whilst many Kiwis are homeless and doesn’t give a toss about kids in poverty. Here then is a blatant example of ‘let them eat cake’. Something has gone terribly wrong with this country that once stamped out poverty and homelessness. Our CEO is a banker folks, he’s not a leader. He simply poses as one.
In case you missed it, the corporatization of our nation & its former government departments has led to a bottom line of maximizing profits. People no longer matter.
“Would you like to own a $6.2 million house in Hawaii? Good news – you already do. But bad news – the Government has bought the place for a diplomat.
It has inspired Story to start up a brand new segment called Silly Spending.
One of the many real estate ads for the home describes it as “ultimate modern luxury”.
“The crystal chandeliers are a great touch. The whole effect is one of a jewel box.”
It is 570 square metres of exceptional floor plan. It’s about four times bigger than your house, if you live in an average New Zealand home.
It’s got a pool and spa deck and it’s one block from the beach. The house is almost twice the average price of houses around it.
We bought the pad last year for diplomat Rob Kaiwai. He’s New Zealand’s first-ever Consul-General in Hawaii. We set up that posting last year to help out the 14 diplomatic postings we already had across the United States.
If you’re thinking he might need his house for high-powered meetings, that’s what the office in downtown Honolulu is for.”
Dave Kennedy
Those in the know are aware that there is no Government guarantee, but it turns out most regular people, and certainly most term depositors, either still think there’s a guarantee, or think there’s always has been one.
Tens of thousands of workers are missing millions of dollars from their KiwiSaver accounts because their employers have failed to either pass on payments docked from their pay, or pay their own employer contributions.
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