by Cimino | 1 Oct 2014 | MMP
Corrected 5 October 2014 Like Dirty Politics, Watergate was revealed ahead of an election that saw the perpetrating political party rewarded, by being returned to power with an increased majority. Five months after five burglars were caught in Democratic Party offices...
by Cimino | 18 Sep 2014 | Corruption
It’s all the proof that was needed. That, as urged by Kim Dotcom, the mainstream media needs to ‘wake up’ and do its job. By the morning after the packed-to-overflowing ‘Moment of Truth’ meeting in Auckland Town Hall on Monday night, the mainstream media should have...
by Cimino | 10 Sep 2014 | Election turnout, MMP, Youth voting
mmp permits youth to be given lifetime licence to vote Before 1996, it mattered—in order to participate in an election, a person needed to be registered in an electorate. This requirement reflected the Westminster system whereby the extent of a voter’s democratic...
by Cimino | 8 Sep 2014 | Coalition democratisation, MMP, Parliament, Representation
It must be exercising the mind of ‘Mattiavelli’ McCarten. Simply give the job of prime minister, post the election, to ‘Wily’ Winston. After all, it is entirely up to the winning bloc as to who the prime minister should be. Across all voters, Winston Peters would...
by Cimino | 1 Sep 2014 | Coalition democratisation, MMP
It might be politicians maintaining the miracle It has happened only once. That the people, rather than the politicians, of an established democracy have led the change to a more proportional system. In fact, Aotearoa in 1993 elected to change from a sometimes...
by Cimino | 20 Aug 2014 | Farm-forestry trail
Developed from report to the 2014 Tane’s Tree Trust annual general meeting With the help of 80 school and college pupils, the Mahurangi Farm-Forestry Trail has reached a milestone. Conceived just two years ago, the mile-long trail is the very happy marriage, and...
by Cimino | 1 Jul 2014 | MMP
Undemocratic, unnecessary and now, in Germany, unconstitutional. In last month’s European Parliamentary elections, most member countries, and for the first time that included Germany, faced no explicit electoral threshold. In February, Germany’s top court had found a...
by Cimino | 27 Jun 2014 | Farm-forestry trail
Written for Tāne’s Tree Trust Newsletter Such have been the negative political consequences of doing so. It wasn’t until in his final four-year term that President Barack Obama felt he could talk openly about addressing anthropogenic global warming. Similarly, it...
by Cimino | 15 Jun 2014 | Carbon tax
Corrected 22 June 2014 Aotearoa’s Green Party is in exceptionally good company. With its proposed carbon tax and ‘climate tax cut’, the party is finally in sync with the carbon ‘fee and dividend’ that Dr James Hansen has relentlessly promoted, at least since 2008. Dr...
by Cimino | 28 May 2014 | Science
After 26 years of climate inaction pull plug on IPCC It is unstoppable, and it has possibly doubled. And while that is only the disintegration of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, the same is probably true for global warming generally. Three years of the most detailed...
