Public esteem for politicians rates them lower than used-car salesmen: broken promises, shady deals, leadership coups, bad behaviour and copious benefits for life – the list goes on and on, as to why politicians are viewed with such suspicion, with plenty of good reason, and yet they remain – “a necessary evil”?

Today’s blog-post article looks inside political myths of our society and its downward spiral: what should honestly be done for recovery, and how much is this a big cultural change that is required?

Blue

The National team for governance is characterised by personal wealth, that regularly inspires a star-struck majority to pursue the same through them in political power. But preying on greed and insecurity, National’s sole method is to treacherously make these negatives worse. Inheritors of aristocratic, royal privilege, such Tory/Conservatives claim their turn at the helm of a democratic state as entitled opportunity for ‘enrichment by right’, and ‘to heck with the consequences’ of deepening social disparity. National’s view of the role of the state is for it to increase private wealth, with themselves and allies at the head of the queue; political allies being the ACT, Maori and United Future parties currently, and financial backers too.

National have no new ideas or innovation to offer, however, but always raise the level of exploitation – the costly suffering of the many, and of the natural environment ‘we all own’ or used to – for the increased benefit of the few. Restoring profitability is their singular goal, in holding on to power.

The primary deceit National perpetuates is that wealth is an endlessly-growing bubble, whereas history shows these always painfully burst. With shallow and equally-corrupt media magnates at their behest – like the Murdoch empire – Tory fraud has been normalised to disguise it, huckstering unsustainable and unequal “growth”. The “trickle down” myth has delivered just polluting and costly debt.

Logically, the amassing of capital wealth in one corner defines – by its absence – poverty in another. That is, money only has meaning (value) in relation to its opposite – the lack of money (and debt). So it is a blatant lie to say “everyone can be wealthy”, because if we all were, inflation would quickly gobble up all the extra dollars printed – the comparative value of goods drop, unless their prices rise; this due to money’s role in the market economy, for managing scarcity – through price.

It is the ideology of the wealthy minority, through an equality-of-opportunity illusion, that asserts the money market as the fairest means of managing scarcity, into the future: whereas on balance, viewed globally, the market is ceasing to deliver.

As one example, the 2011 Middle East uprisings are mostly ascribed to last summer’s drought in Russia, which ruined the wheat harvest and pushed the price of staple food up beyond working household reach. By modern “just in time delivery” technique, the global stores of commodities like wheat have been run down – to increase suited trader profits – so destabilising global society and the global market itself. A more rational system of production and distribution grows more urgent every day. But National lie to the contrary, and exploit the growing social disparity instead.

Whether by leaky homes or earthquakes (destruction of safe regulation) or lost schools and public services, it is ordinary working householders who are always paying the price of corrupt political commercial profit. Sudden appearance of the Fulton and Hogan construction families on the latest rich list – on the back of damaged Christchurch – bears this out: Growth in Rich Listers’ wealth defies global slump nbr.co.nz 29 July 2011.

The total private wealth of the wealthiest minority has gone up 18.4 percent in the past year. Against the backdrop of deepening global recession and local privation, that is simply incredible! – How can an economic system get away with being so egregiously unfair, and peddling such lies about itself? Answer: the Murdoch “News of the World” media principles – or lack of them – tend to prevail.

Ref. Leaky homes still being built – adjudicator radionz.co.nz/news and Rich Listers enjoy 20pc increase in wealth nzherald.co.nz and Rich List ‘cup of cold sick’ to poor voxy.co.nz/politics 29 July 2011; Life in the quake zone: ‘It’s like your worst nightmare coming true’ and No state of emergency after quakes nzherald.co.nz 14 Jun 2011.

The state of the global financial system – with the US and Eurozone debt crises at centre since 2008, with future unknown – is enough to tell us the whole rocky system is now teetering dangerously, towards economic depression deemed “impossible” by its owners, so what should come next? Typically dishonest politicians will never tell you: they simply don’t know. This is chance and whim, “the anarchy of the market” in action. Tougher times still lay ahead: no one has planned for the global energy needs of industrial food production, so billions more people must simply go hungry. Lifeboats are few, and Darwinian expiry seems expected. That is an inhumane and unnecessary waste of potential, easily foreseeable on current trends: a travesty and genocide in the making.

Instead of good governance, all we can see today is long-term subterfuge: like National’s absorption of Labour’s 1990s right wing – the Douglas/Prebble ACT Party – directly this year, under former National leader Don Brash’s coup. Ref. Prebble backs Brash move rotoruadailypost.co.nz/local/news 30 April 2011 [2] and [TV3] The Nation: Transcipt of Prebble Interview scoop.co.nz 7 May 2011.

Democratic choice, per neo-feudal anathema, is always being reduced if not eradicated by National. Take the National-ACT-Maori Party demolition of balanced regional government in Canterbury, for example. Industry chiefs have been implanted in charge of their own regulation, corruptly, through “politically correct” Tangata Whenua corporate inclusion, no less. Ordinary people have been denied and overtly robbed, by the post-modern knights, corporate warriors on horseback: each with a shining new and exclusive castle. The castles for the poor neo-peasantry – slaves in their own trailer-park land (if they are lucky) – are the new private prisons being built: more foolishly-wasted human potential.

The corporate knights must be spilt from the saddle, if working families are to be able to eat and stay together, in future. The knights’ mythology is selfish and regressive, offering no substantive gains for all.

Red

The “Labour Party” understands and opposes the Tory/Nationalist economic system – or used to, long ago. Now they mimic Conservative behaviour, and simply bide their time until their turn at the helm of state – to soften the conservative blows upon workers as an alternative, but especially to secure career-highs and more security for the professional groups they predominantly represent: teachers, lawyers, and trade union officials etc. This leadership blend has now been proven historically redundant – unemployed and unemployable under modern industrial capitalism – like its constituents.

The revitalised edge of a new labour party is most urgently needed, to actually achieve social equity, today.

Green

All promise and low delivery: through intellectual arrogance that tries to deny the fundamental division between Blue and Red orientation and methods, so does falter infected with both. Green capitalism is still capitalism – on an unsustainable spiral downwards. Green toes under the befuddling table of Parliamentary decision-making resolves nothing, but – at best – a modernisation of Labour social-democracy. But that, as an adjunct to non-delivering markets, is likewise failing.

If the Greens cannot stand up to conflicted, illegal irrigating-farmer votes at regional council level and confront traditional rural thieves – in favour of keeping spoilt seats alongside said settler farmers – then they, like compromised and subservient Labour, share this innate Federated Farmer and National Party corruption. [2]

Taking Labour’s modus one step further – and into identity crisis – the Greens pose as a left-wing party but are actually of the right for that, with blanket denial obscuring how easily and steadily they are shifting across the centre in National’s direction. They refuse to present a coherent, believable opposition.

“The Greens love to think of themselves as whiter than white. They don’t engage in those grubby political shenanigans like the others.” Calling BS on the Greens’ ‘deal’ John Hartevelt blog 25/07/2011.

Red-White-Black

Can separatist ideology survive the reality of Nationalist corporate corruption, that Iwi authority has now delivered having learned the wrong, dishonest lessons of capitalism?

Will its trade-off – Kohanga Reo funding lost in attaining Pakeha-style corporate power – cost linguistic and therefore cultural identity? How can Maori honestly expect to fare better than the Celts did with their cultures, in the face of the Union Jack? Will liberals wake up to these terminal implications of the Treaty of Waitangi, and break free of the aristocrat chains around it – to settle every household’s needs as one?

A nationalist inability to resolve these contradictions of class orientation, will see neither Te Mana nor the Maori Party able to make the common ground with each other that is necessary for lasting social effect, it seems. Social justice may need a new vehicle,

[2] Richard Prebble: The ACT leadership change “was because of ‘the killing zone’ – when no small New Zealand party whose members had taken ministerial positions, including New Zealand First, Alliance and Act, had survived the next election. He said this was to do with party identity. ‘It’s very difficult for a party to keep its identity after being part of government.’ But he thought Dr Brash’s involvement with Act would help.”

New Red and Black

An honest political offering, that puts integrity at the forefront for telling working families exactly how it is, and tailors itself electorally against the ethical deficit in governance that prevails in 2011 New Zealand, is both sorely needed and here: the Republic of Canterbury Party. Your support is invited and warmly appreciated.

Let this launch draw inspiration from when early Canterbury leader James FitzGerald stood up for probity, against the schemes of William Moorhouse, for better Christchurch city development as advocated through new newspaper the Christchurch Press – under the “Nihil utile quod non honestum” banner motto: “nothing is useful without honesty”. Ref. “The Vault looks back at the history of the Christchurch Press as it celebrates a hundred and fifty years. (10′43″)” radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons 29 July 2011 podcast .mp3; Moorhouse, William Sefton Dictionary of New Zealand Biography TeAra.govt.nz 2010 and Moorhouse, William Sefton Encyclopedia of New Zealand 1966; for context see this 1853 electoral poster appeal “to workingmen” nzhistory.net.nz

Sadly, having in 2010 undermined Canterbury regional democracy, The Press has long-since failed its auspicious purpose, under Fairfax media-monopoly ownership. Alternative media commentary must therefore now level the playing field.

[2] And there has been a modern-day echo of Moorhouse controversy, where a direct descendent has abused high organisational office within the Aoraki/Canterbury Green Party – to eliminate rivals and clear the way for his own progress on the Green Party candidate list in 2011. The party itself, in taking no action against such corrupt practise, confirms the rightist unethical nature of its ultimately empty message and effect.

~ Kia ora