Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Friday, August 30, 2013

Gerry Brownlee; IRD Raids; Freedom of the Press - 100% Pure Surveillance State.



On the back of yesterday’s finding that no government official is to be punished for GCSB’s illegal spying activities, why am I wholly unsurprised that Gerry Brownlee, doing his damnedest to earn himself a nic of Brownshirt, doesn’t understand the nature, nor the need, of a free press:


Cabinet Minister Gerry Brownlee has questioned why political reporters' phone, email and swipe card records should be protected when they frequently publish classified information or the private records of others.


There are reasoned debates, and pretty basic ones, as to why this is, Gerry, but I prefer to let my readers experience the truth in the way novelists would do: show not tell.

In case Gerry suspects my veracity given the supposedly extreme nature of this blog, by which I mean I believe in the blasphemy of an individual’s freedom from himself, the below was published just two days ago by a reputable, conservative firm that runs continuing education courses in taxation for the legal and accounting professions. When reading the below powers of IRD to raid YOU ask yourself are these powers those that would exist in a free society, or that authoritarian one which existed behind the Iron Curtain. The extract is long, but if you want to understand the central theme of this blog, written from behind the Kiwi IRon Drape, and more importantly, the nature of the surveillance state you live in, you will find this fascinating.


The Commissioner has recently published an Operational Statement (OS 13/01) on the Commissioners search and seizure powers under section 16 of the Tax Administration Act 1994. OS 13/01 seeks to provide practical guidance to IRD officers and taxpayers when the Commissioner invokes these powers.

That the Commissioner has immense powers under section 16 is beyond debate. The Commissioner can search any property at any time, and may remove and retain any and all documents and records the Commissioner considers may be relevant to any tax issues. Where however such search is to take place at a dwelling, the Commissioner is required to obtain a District Court warrant beforehand. In practise the Commissioner will obtain such a warrant without notice to the taxpayer concerned, and so without the taxpayer having an opportunity to present their case to the Court considering the issue of the warrant.

The scale of the Commissioner’s search and seizure powers presumably makes the Police Commissioner’s eyes water with envy. In addition, the Commissioner effectively answers to no one, save for the Courts where a taxpayer has sufficient financial resources and is sufficiently brave to challenge the Commissioner.      

Taxpayers have few rights when being raided, and these are effectively restricted to claims of privilege or non-disclosure in respect of documents seized. It is imperative that taxpayers who are being raided obtain the services of a tax solicitor to represent them when the IRD arrive. Usually a solicitor is able to agree a process applicable to the conduct of the raid with the IRD officers whereby the Commissioner’s rights are secured, as is the taxpayers’ privilege or non-disclosure rights.

In practise it is unclear exactly how wide the IRD's powers are, and so the presence of a tax solicitor can be useful to monitor events so as to ensure that the IRD officers carrying out the raid do not overstep their powers.  In our experience IRD officers generally do try to act in a professional manner, but it needs to be borne in mind that their objective is to advance the Commissioner’s interests, not the taxpayers.

Practical issues that we have been confronted with during IRD raids include;


·         IRD officers attempting to ‘detain’ or restrict the movement of staff and other persons present at the premises during the raid.

·         IRD officers seizing immigration documents and passports belonging to relatives of the taxpayer.

·         A locksmith engaged by the IRD who forcibly opened a combination lock leather briefcase with a hacksaw, (the combination of which the taxpayer had forgotten) after declaring that he had the ‘expertise’ to open the combination lock.



Note the telling use of the word brave, as in you would need to be brave in taking on the commissioner. This is the standard of life in all police-surveillance states where you are wise to be scared of those state officials who have the power of God over you: the tax state, as with all terror states, achieves its evil by invoking a prudent fear of itself. That said, and before getting to the beef of the free press, a question for Gerry:

Given ‘in practise it is unclear exactly how wide the IRD’s powers are’, and let’s face it, they are pretty much limitless, what point is there having a tax solicitor present ‘to monitor events to ensure that the IRD officers … do not overstep their powers?  Just intellectual curiosity, though perhaps you might ask the invisible Minister McClay for a little more clarity to the tyranny.

But here’s the scary thing, speaking to the point. Government in New Zealand has assumed these incredible powers to surveil and raid its own citizens, not to protect us from the outside threats of dreary bearded beaded men, but to take the property and the freedoms of we who are forced to pay for our own enslavement 'inland'. The powers described above are 100% pure police state, because how else can you interpret them? And government has assumed these powers with a free press. Indeed - BREAKING NEWS - many in our MSM are brain-washed enough to have voted for this. Regardless, Gerry only knows where we would be without a free press. I don’t frankly understand how we ever got to this dark place we find ourselves groping around in, forcibly prostrated in front of the Fortress of Legislation in the Capital, our wallets and bank accounts held open to them.

Do you get it yet, Gerry?


Or to approach it via a quotation (hattip Café Hayek) from Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues that points out well the hypocrisy of the Left whom tried to own the debate against the GCSB spooks, while supporting the wholesale surveillance and plundering of myself by this department:


No left egalitarian has explained how such [taxes] square with Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative: “So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means.”  Taxing Peter to pay Paul is using Peter for Paul.  It is corrupting.  Modern governments have been encouraged to think that any abuse of Peter is just fine, that Peter is a slave available for any duty that the ruler has in mind.  A little like non-modern governments.


The free press, Gerry, is required to report on just that abuse described, until at some stage enough of us hopefully wake up, and we take the free West back again from bullies like yourself. To keep iterating this, you have all the power, individuals have been left with none, so journalists are our canaries down the mine shaft, and must be protected as long as possible, for when their freedoms go, the tiny flame of freedom left us, will be blown out entirely.

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath for the Western Spring. So let's change the topic: how are the compulsory property confiscations going in Christchurch then?


Postscript:

Yes, I'm gutted I didn't work a Gerry-rigged pun into the above.


Tuesday, August 27, 2013

David Cunliffe and the End of the Free World, Again.



The dreadful No Right Turn summed up Keynesian Socialist David Cunliffe’s victory nomination speech yesterday well enough:



Note his delight in the scale of theft he knows David will enact. It’s sick. It’s the ‘fuck yeah’ of Chris Trotter delighting in squeezing my pips until they squeak.

Here’s an interesting notion, those of us bloggers writing political blogs, put up on our menus the income tax we’ll be paying over the coming twelve months. Let’s see which of the statist’s are living by their principles. I don’t have to because this blog is about my privacy, and how I have so little of it, but tomorrow I’ll be paying a third of this year's provisional tax, and it’s five figures.

This is David’s true slogan:

New taxes and spending.
New taxes and spending.
New taxes and spending.

Same old.
Same old.

Writing from a house in that 27% of households paying 70% of the tax take, and constraining ourselves and our finances this year to pay our tax bills so mum of nine can have the extra room for her Sky decoder, I ask David, who used the word fair seven times in a one and a half page speech, to take my fairness test please, because not a single politician has felt themselves up to the task yet.

As a man who has had to have my privacy and right to be left alone before the tax surveillance state taken from me, because apparently David knows how to spend my money better than I do, let's first replace fair with serfdom.

Then looking further through David’s speech in place of community, let's write dependence. Community can only exist on voluntary relationships and the voluntary transaction, not on David’s viciously coercive tax state and the welfare that corrodes self-respect, self-responsibility, and the bonds of natural love and affection between families by incentivising the most imprudent life choices.

And the sad thing is we have all the evidence we need at where his Keynesian socialism leads economically: let’s take at random any country in Europe, say, France:


France's Socialist government has admitted that the country cannot cope with any further tax rises and promised no more hikes just days ahead of the country's largest ever tax bill.

Returning from their summer break, the French are about to discover stinging rises in tax bills in their letter boxes – the result of a series of new levies enacted by President François Hollande as he seeks to plug the French deficit and bring down public debt – now riding at 92 per cent of GDP.

But the extent of the hikes has apparently even shocked the very Socialist ministers who implemented them.

The total tax pressure (taxes and social security contributions) will account for 46.3 per cent of GDP this year – a historic high – compared to 45 per cent in 2012.

Some 16 million households will see an automatic 2 per cent rise in income tax as calculations are no longer mitigated by inflation.

The rich will see the highest rises, following Mr Hollande's decision to raise the rate to 45 per cent for those earning more than 150,000 euros – effectively 49 per cent due to an additional levy.


And here’s the truly offensive bit:


“The problem in France — for both the Left and Right — is that nobody has the bravery to slash state spending, which has now reached 57 per cent of GDP. Just how high can it go?”


Really, is that what we want for New Zealand? Because that’s what David Cunliffe and the cluelessly vicious No Right Turn will bring us. And No Right Turn is further clueless in his campaign against the GCSB Bill, last month, when he takes this blood lust thirst in the tax surveillance state – figure it out. The Left double standard.

Talking of double standards, recalling my blog post from yesterday I am also disappointed that after wanting gender quotas just last month, not one Labour woman MP has tried to contest the leadership away from this dreadful man, and save us from him. Apparently Labour women do expect to be given by quota what they don’t have the gumption to contest when they have equal footing. There’s plenty of capable women Labour MPs, why aren’t any of you contesting? You know you’ll be getting this shameful hypocrisy pointed out to you when at some stage in the future you’re furthering the coercive state by legislating gender quotas on the private sector, because we know that’s the agenda.

Finally, unlike No Right Turn, who certainly lives up to the first part of his name before the forward slash, none of this post is about money. It’s about the voluntary society versus the planned economy dependent as that is on our centrally planned and surveilled lives.

If David makes it to the sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation in 2014, I’ll be either semi or completely retiring: I won’t be  his serf.

Because if David wins, it really is the end of the free world, again.


Update 1:

Ele Ludemann has a great post up, also, on the foolishness of taxing and spending Cunliffe.


Monday, August 26, 2013

This is None of My Business, but … Labour Leadership Qua Women & Maori MPs.



I can’t be bothered with the strategising of party politics, unless it impacts on policy that may sometime be forced on me. So, let’s look at the Labour women:



At the time of writing this, not a single woman MP from Labour has put up their hand to democratically contest the Labour leadership: this from the party just two months ago where many MPs were calling for gender quotas in the party.

Labour women MPs cannot expect to be given by quota what they are not prepared to fight for when they have equal opportunity with Labour men. Further, with Shane – gelding – Jones in the contest, you can forget a party gender quota should he win even deputy. His hand up for this contest yesterday, should have been all the incentive Labour women required to throw everything they have to gaining leader, deputy, or finance.

There are many capable Labour women MPs, so why are you not running?

Furthermore, I agree with Morgan Godfrey: this is the Labour party, of course it needs Maori represented in the leadership and at the policy table, so given the only Maori in the running so far is Jones, then strategically the case could be made for one of the very able Maori Labour women MPs to run.

But whatever, all I’m saying is a woman must have a go. Because this will become my business if, when Labour ever gains that sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation, it then attempts to implement not just a gender quota within the party, which I couldn’t care less about, that’s Labour Party business, but also force it on the private sector, making gender quotas an issue of the voluntary, free society, versus the coerced one again. If no woman contests this, I'll be pointing out the double standard here.

Also, my offer, seriously made, for a single election cycle to give my vote to Labour in 2014, on the conditions I have prescribed to Maryan Street, another able MP, still stands.


Random thoughts:


Delving deeper into this, New Zealand’s first transgender politician, Georgina Beyer, has made the observation yesterday that if Grant Robertson wins the leadership – and if I voted Labour he would be my pick to unite the caucus – then his sexuality would lose Labour the working class vote in South Auckland. So perhaps the women of Labour are worried such bigotry in the Labour voting base would damage Labour’s chances also. Two things:

That doesn’t stand up historically, citing Helen Clark.

Just like Grant Roberston, that doesn’t matter, it concerns next year’s election: one of you, or better, more, need to be contesting this leadership.

Albeit Beyer’s comments do reflect how Left politics is sadly about the collective identity, which lends itself to stereotypical thinking and bigotry, because thinking and therefore policy is designed around identity with a  group, be it race, gender, tribe etc, rather than the classical liberal individualism born of the refulgent mind I advocate which can be the only basis to the free, enlightened society.