Mediaboss Marketing

The first budget in decades from a Labour majority government will be unveiled on Thursday and all signs point to restrained spending. Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney dreams big and considers what a transformative budget would look like. Luckily, one already exists.

Picture this.

The finance minister (and deputy prime minister) stands up in the house and delivers a budget that truly seizes on growing international calls to build back better. Its a budget aimed at long-standing issues facing the country and squarely addresses them.

The minister acknowledges that the Covid-19 recovery runs the risk of leaving some groups of people behind and provides funding to address their problems. The opposition is left flat-footed and focuses on the amount of spending, rather than the people who need it and who will benefit.

The minister, standing in the house, is in command of their portfolio and in command of the real issues.

Using wellbeing analysis, the budget doesnt force groups to compete with one another for funding. Instead, it highlights the needs of the community and provides mechanisms to tackle their problems.

The budget provides significant support for programmes to address the historically unmet needs of some vulnerable communities, especially women. Life-changing amounts of money are invested to prevent family and sexual violence.

The government also extends income support, particularly to those who have recently lost their job. And the budget ensures unprecedented investments in delivering the greener economy that we all need. That includes targeted support to significantly boost social housing construction and to insulate properties for those on the lowest incomes.

To write that budget, the government agrees to work closely with unions to ensure that working people have better retirement savings. There is additional assistance for students who have had to study during some of the most difficult circumstances that anyone can remember. The minister also commits the government to better protect those working in the gig economy.

To pay for all this, the minister of finance says those who are the most able should contribute a little more. There will be an additional surcharge on luxury cars, boats and private aircraft. Overseas owners who leave their properties vacant will pay an annual 1% levy on the value of that property.

Digital service companies will now need to pay a small tax on their overall revenue until a multinational approach can be delivered.

Tax inspectors will be given additional resources to properly tackle tax avoidance and evasion, so that everyone is paying their fair share. Changes to transparency rules will help, so that the true owners of assets can be identified and complex tax avoidance schemes are cut through.

You dont need to be day-dreaming to make this vision a reality. Instead, just pick up a copy of the 2021 Canadian budget, recently tabled by deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland.

The Canadian budget shows why these changes in spending are needed. It reveals that those with the lowest income in Canada have faced the highest rates of job loss during Covid-19.

The clearest demonstration of need is the $30 billion (all figures in Canadian dollars) being provided to make childcare more affordable. By 2026, childcare in Canada will cost $10 a day. It currently costs $1,500 a month in Toronto about $70 a day. That number will be cut in half next year.

Back here in New Zealand, the debate surrounding budget 2021 has instead been about the governments decision to balance spending needs with the need to maintain fiscal control. Deputy prime minister and finance minister Grant Robertson has vowed to tackle a non-existent debt crisis. That was used to justify a decision to restrain pay rises for much of the public workforce while property prices go through the roof and the banks make record profits.

The budget provides an opportunity for setting out a credible long-term plan for the Covid-19 recovery. Its focus should be on how to create a more productive, sustainable and inclusive economy.

Theres much to applaud in Robertsons recent statement on the budget: In our view, an investment-focused recovery that supports all New Zealanders is the way to ensure that our finances remain sustainable. It is also the way in which the government will continue to tackle the long-standing issues that we were elected to address. Well said.

New Zealands budget will be released tomorrow and with it, the government risks falling behind other progressive governments around the world. The US is re-equipping its economy and has a task force led by vice president Kamala Harris to increase union membership. Even Australias government has chosen not to follow the path of austerity, prioritising getting people into jobs rather than chasing a surplus.

Budgets are about choices.

We made choices during Covid that saw the country come together and defeat the virus. We made choices at the election to spend money so that we could continue that fight. Thanks to our efforts we now have choices about what to do with the resources that victory has freed-up. Do we choose a K-shaped recovery where there is an increasing disparity in who is benefitting from growth? Or do we grasp that now is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do the right thing and support all New Zealanders to live better lives?

Subscribe to The Bulletin to get all the days key news stories in five minutes delivered every weekday at 7.30am.

See original here:
The dream budget for NZ progressives already exists across the Pacific - The Spinoff

On this edition of Your Call, were discussing the massive Pentagon budget. As the Biden administration announces plans for big dollar projects like improving the crumbling US infrastructure and funding desperately needed social services, the question is: How are we going to pay for it? But that question is never asked about military spending.

Fifty Democratic politicians and a wide range of progressive groups recently sent a letter to the administration urging President Biden to reevaluate our spending priorities, starting with the Department of Defense. Hundreds of billions of dollars now directed to the military would have greater return if invested in diplomacy, humanitarian aid, global public health, sustainability initiatives, and basic research. We could cut the Pentagon budget by more than 10 percent and still spend more than the next 10 largest militaries combined.

Guest:Lindsay Koshgarian, program director with the National Priorities Project

Web Resources:

MarketWatch: Biden Is Thinking Big on Jobs. On the Pentagon, He Should Think Smaller.

Institute for Policy Studies: Bidens Pentagon is Still Trumps Pentagon

Truthout: Pentagon and Tax Cheats Already Cost Taxpayers Far More Than Bidens Job Plan

Institute for Policy Studies: 18 Years of Invasion in Iraq

The rest is here:
Progressives Call On The Biden Administration To Cut The Massive Pentagon Budget - KALW

President Joe Bidens Republican critics charge that he has foisted a bait and switch on voters that he campaigned as a moderate but veered abruptly to the left after he arrived at the White House.

The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan, but the switch is hes governed as a socialist, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California complained last month.

He talks like a moderate but is governing to satisfy the far left, Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky chimed in.

Theyre right on one count: Biden is pushing an ambitious progressive program while making it sound, well, moderate.

But their charge of false advertising is bogus. Biden never concealed his big-government goals; they were all in plain sight in his platform.

Its still on the campaign website for anyone who wants to check. Candidate Biden called for more than $4 trillion in new federal spending, beginning with an immediate stimulus to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It included massive proposals to combat climate change, rebuild infrastructure, reduce poverty, subsidize child care and provide universal pre-K education.

Sound familiar? All those planks resurfaced in Bidens proposals this year: his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, his $2 trillion-plus jobs plan and his $1.8 trillion family policy plan.

To be fair, McCarthy and McConnell may have been too busy to read up on their opponents long and detailed program. Their party saved time by not having a platform at all.

But surely they noticed when former President Barack Obama released a video last year praising Biden for the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history. Or when Biden, in his last big campaign speech, compared his program to Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and promised a pandemic plan, a health care plan, a climate plan and an economic plan to give working people a fair shot again.

None of this should have come as a surprise, Greg Schultz, Bidens campaign manager during last years primary season, told me. My only surprise is that people werent listening.

McCarthy and McConnell werent the only ones who underestimated Bidens commitments. Plenty of progressives didnt quite believe it, either.

After all, during the primaries Biden had presented himself as a moderate, pragmatic alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Bidens Democratic rivals chastised him for centrist positions he took decades ago: his 1970s opposition to mandatory busing to desegregate schools, his 1994 vote for then-President Bill Clintons punitive crime bill. Those ancient controversies made him sound like an out-of-touch relic.

But they were forgetting one of Bidens most striking features: his adaptability. He is as critics used to say about FDR something of a political chameleon.

Over 51 years in politics, Biden has always positioned himself at his partys center which has required a steady evolution toward the left.

The Biden of 2008 who ran as Obamas running mate was more progressive than the Biden of 1994 who voted for Clintons crime bill. The Biden of 2012 who declared himself a fan of same-sex marriage was more progressive than the Biden of 2008.

When he pondered entering the 2016 presidential race, he intended to run to Hillary Clintons left and Bernie Sanders right a classic Biden gambit to seek his partys center point.

Biden for President was going to go big, Biden wrote of the plans for that never-launched campaign in his 2017 memoir. A $15 minimum wage. Free tuition at our public colleges and universities. Real job training. On-site affordable child care. Equal pay for women. Strengthening the Affordable Care Act. A job creation program built on investing in and modernizing our roads and bridges. ... We needed what I called an American Renewal Project.

By the time Biden ran in 2020, two things happened to push him even further.

One was the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it clear to both parties that big spending would be needed to rescue the economy. After Republican leaders, including then-President Donald Trump, approved more than $3.8 trillion in coronavirus relief last year, GOP complaints about big-money requests from the new president sounded hollow.

The second was Democrats unexpected capture of 50 seats in the Senate, which meant the new president could pass much of his program without Republican votes. Yes, Biden had promised to seek bipartisan compromises but now he no longer had to worry about obstructionist Republicans whose only goal was to stop his program in its tracks.

And that not spurious charges of a bait and switch on policy is probably what makes Mitch McConnell so grouchy.

The rest is here:
MCMANUS: Yes, Biden is governing as a progressive. But that shouldn't surprise you - shorelinemedia.net

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonThe curious case of the COVID-19 origin Harris headlining Asian American Democratic PAC's summit Congress won't end the wars, so states must MORE will address the inauguralAsian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit this month amid a rise in violence and hate crimes against members of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community in the U.S.

The virtual event, dubbedFrom Victory to Unity, will be hosted by theAAPI Victory Fund. It is slated to take place Wednesday.

"AAPI electoral power is on the rise and its time AAPI communities get the same recognition, resources, and support as every other ethnic group," Clinton said in a statement. "AAPIs are diverse and growing communities with their own set of challenges and opportunities, and we need to acknowledge that and work to empower them in diverse ways.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have skyrocketed amid the coronavirus pandemic. Anti-Asian hate incidents increased from3,795 to 6,603 in the period between March 2020 and March 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

At the same time, more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are becoming politically active in the U.S.

Rep. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, last month launched In Our Hands PAC, which will recruit and support Asian American and Pacific Islander candidates and other candidates of color.

Vice President Harris also became the first South Asian person and first Black person to hold thenation's second-highest executive officeearlier this year, whileReps. Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) became some of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress.

Asian American and Pacific Islandervoters turned out in record numbers in the 2020 election cycle, playing a crucial role in states such as Georgia, where some counts show their voter participation doubling, helping Democrats flip the Republican stronghold.

Continued here:
Hillary Clinton to speak at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders summit | TheHill - The Hill

Today we answer questions and comments from readers and others wondering who thought it was a good idea to let this guy write a column?

You recently claimed the California exodus is a bunch of hooey.

True.

Then the state lost a congressional seat and it was announced that California is losing population for the first time in history.

Also true.

How do you feel now?

Like the state has a little bit more elbow room.

Seriously.

The column explored why so many folks are so eager to write Californias obituary.

The decades-old phenomenon is a product of jealousy and, more recently, the competition between the blue-America capital of California and the red-America capital of Texas. If California and its progressive policies are seen as failing by driving hordes of residents to head for the exits some consider that proof that Texas and its conservative approach offers a better way.

In short, the narrative is driven more by politics than reality.

But what about the population decline?

Demographers said deaths related to COVID-19, a falling birth rate and federal immigration restrictions were key drivers of the states population loss. And while Californias crazy-high cost of housing and comparatively steep tax rate have doubtless caused some to leave the state, those were not the primary reasons that California lost population.

More significantly, experts dont see the falling numbers as the start of a long-term pattern. They expect the state to resume its growth, albeit not at the booming levels of old, as early as this year.

But you flat-out called the exodus a myth.

And it is.

To read some of the apocalyptic coverage, you would think Californians were kicking and gouging each others eyes out as they overran the border with Nevada, Oregon and Arizona. Youd think the states population had fallen in half. Actually, California gained residents over the last decade, though the states population dipped by 0.46% in the last 12 months.

If you think 0.46% is a huge number, youd best not consider a career as a financial advisor.

You recently compared California in 2003, the last time there was a gubernatorial recall, to 2021.

Yes. A number of statistics, including the states dramatic political and cultural shift toward the Democratic Party, suggest Gov. Gavin Newsom is well-positioned to survive this current attempt.

So youre predicting Newsom prevails.

I make no predictions. Im smart enough to know what Im not smart enough to know.

You failed to include a comparison of the states homeless population then and now.

Its a big issue and definitely a political weight on Newsom.

According to the most recent data from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Developments point-in-time count, there were roughly 162,000 homeless residents living in California in 2020. Comparisons are inexact because HUD records go back only to 2005; at that time, the number was about 188,000.

In a recent column about sore losers you failed to mention Democrats Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams.

The old Oh, yeah? Well, what about ...

Excuse me, Im asking the questions.

OK.

Well, what about Clinton and Abrams?

Clinton has harshly criticized former President Trump on a number of occasions and even referred to him more than once as an illegitimate president who stole the election. But theres a world of difference between a private citizen even one as famous as Clinton venting on a book tour and Trumps actions before and after leaving the White House.

She didnt vigorously seek to overturn the outcome of the 2016 contest, conceding to Trump hours after the polls closed. Clinton attended his inauguration, as is customary.

Trump skipped President Bidens swearing-in, an event that has long highlighted and celebrated the nations traditionally peaceful transfer of power, and continues almost daily to publicly press the falsehood that he beat Biden and the election was rigged.

More importantly, Clinton didnt help incite a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol by supporters seeking to reverse the results of a demonstrably free and fair election.

What about Abrams?

After accusing Republican Brian Kemp of using his position as the states chief election officer to interfere with the 2018 gubernatorial contest, Abrams issued a carefully worded statement acknowledging that Kemp would be certified as the victor. But she was not, Abrams said, delivering a speech of concession. From a practical standpoint, it was a distinction without any difference.

Kemp vehemently denied the allegation of misconduct and a USA Today analysis found not much empirical evidence supporting the assertion that Kemp either suppressed the vote or stole the election from Abrams.

While some may find Abrams behavior ungracious, she didnt then set out as Republicans legislators across the country have to pass laws making it harder for people to vote or, more crucially, empowering lawmakers to overturn elections results they dont like.

Thats a big difference.

What about the Russia hoax and widespread 2020 election fraud?

No one from Trumps campaign was charged with conspiring with Russians during the 2016 election, and theres no proof that Moscow tipped the election away from Clinton. However, theres incontrovertible evidence that Trump and his campaign aides welcomed and even invited Russias support, which involved the release of hacked emails from Clintons campaign and spreading disinformation on social media.

As for allegations of widespread voter fraud, maybe theyll find millions of uncounted Trump ballots when they drain the Loch Ness and find the monster that lives there. Or up in the trees where unicorns fly.

But I wouldnt count on it.

So youre always right about everything?

Ask my wife. Shell certainly disabuse you of that notion. Or if youd rather, search for barabak, presidential and long shots to see just how badly I can flub things.

Meantime, keep the cards and letters coming.

Link:
Debunking Russia hoax, California exodus and other myths - Los Angeles Times