Politico reports: Gavin Newsom is fully embracing his status as his party’s foremost podcast bro. … It got off to a polarizing start last March, with a succession of friendly interviews with conservative influencers like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. And while the headlines that tended to enrage Democrats have fallen off, the California governor’s […]
Newsom talking across the aisle
Newsom talking across the aisle
31 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: 2028 presidential election
Crossing the Floor: Tales from the Oral History Project
31 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in politics Tags: British politics
Following some recent, high-profile, political defections, Alfie Steer and Dr Emma Peplow have delved into the History of Parliament’s Oral History archive to explore historical cases of MPs changing their party affiliations: their causes, motivations and wider significance. Political defections, commonly known in Westminster parlance as ‘Crossing the Floor’, have been a phenomenon in Parliament…
Crossing the Floor: Tales from the Oral History Project
No wonder Te Pāti Māori wants to abolish prisons when Māori make up most of the inmates
30 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order, regressive left
Te Pāti Māori says it wants to abolish prisons by 2040.
No wonder Te Pāti Māori wants to abolish prisons when Māori make up most of the inmates
How authorities failed campers at Mount Maunganui
29 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of natural disasters, politics - New Zealand
The picture is firming up, and it’s devastating. Six people are dead at the foot of Mount Maunganui because, over four critical hours on the morning of 22 January, New Zealand’s emergency management system failed. Not just failed, but failed repeatedly, in ways that now look systemic. And what’s becoming clearer with each new revelation […]
How authorities failed campers at Mount Maunganui
Health workers are kicking off their day with a karakia, but Act MP ensures it is in their own time and not compulsory
28 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
No, it’s not just a lump of rock. The National Public Health Service has been getting along – it seems – on a wing and a prayer. The Platform’s Tina Nixon drew PoO’s attention to the spiritual side of the service’s daily rituals and routines in an interview with Act MP Todd Stephenson. This prompted […]
Health workers are kicking off their day with a karakia, but Act MP ensures it is in their own time and not compulsory
The full text of Don Brash’s Orewa speech (2004)
28 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in discrimination, politics - New Zealand
I shared the video of Don Brash’s 2004 Orewa speech earlier.
The full text of Don Brash’s Orewa speech (2004)
Michelle Tandler on NYC rent control
28 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: rent control
This is what I’m seeing: + 2.4 million rent-controlled apartments in a city with a massive housing shortage and 1.4% vacancy rate. + A huge % of these tenants are wealthy, white boomers using the units as pieds-a-terres while they spend their weekends and summers elsewhere. + Meanwhile, the government is using rent control to…
Michelle Tandler on NYC rent control
How Te Pāti Māori and the Greens have put Labour in check on the election-year chess board
27 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand Tags: 2026 general election
* Chris Trotter writes – Chess is war on 64 squares. War is politics by other means. Unsurprising, then, that the moves of chess players and the moves of politicians have much in common. Above all other objectives the political strategist seeks to position adversaries where they can do the least harm. Enemies only become dangerous […]
How Te Pāti Māori and the Greens have put Labour in check on the election-year chess board
Some Links
26 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, international economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice
TweetPhil Magness’s new essay on the origins of the vague and derogatory term “neoliberalism” is superb. A slice: While most versions of the neoliberal label still come from the academic left today, the term has come back into favor within a certain, curious strand of the right. Conservative writers such as Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule,…
Some Links
The High Cost of Luxury Beliefs
26 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - New Zealand, Marxist economics Tags: political correctness, regressive left
Roger Partridge writes – Some ideas cost nothing to believe but a great deal to implement. Political commentator Rob Henderson calls them “luxury beliefs” – convictions that signal virtue among the comfortable while imposing very real costs on those with much less room to manoeuvre. New Zealand, for reasons cultural as much as political, has […]
The High Cost of Luxury Beliefs
Waking up to the reality of tobacco’s black market
25 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, health economics, politics - Australia Tags: economics of smoking
There’s a website called Tobacco in Australia: Facts and Issues which is written by a few anti-smoking activist-academics. It provides lots of tobacco-related statistics and a bit of editorialising. The website has a whole section devoted to criticising “industry estimates of the extent of illicit trade in tobacco”. It is an article of faith in tobakko…
Waking up to the reality of tobacco’s black market
Poor whites used to vote for Democratic presidential candidates while rich whites voted Repulican. This has now reversed
24 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential elections, voter demographics
See Entertainment got too good by Eric Levitz of Vox. The article has some interesting ideas on why this happened along with some useful graphics. I have links to several related posts on the attitudes of Democrats & Repulicans, what shapes their views, how they differ, how they affect their daily lives and why they change…
Poor whites used to vote for Democratic presidential candidates while rich whites voted Repulican. This has now reversed
How the Labour Party will campaign in 2026
24 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand Tags: 2026 general election
This week Chris Hipkins gave us the clearest picture yet of how Labour plans to fight the 2026 election. His speech at the party’s caucus retreat in West Auckland, and then a rally-style address to party activists, revealed a strategy that combines class-based attack lines, relentless positivity, and a narrowed focus on kitchen-table concerns. But […]
How the Labour Party will campaign in 2026
Americans Are Getting Richer, Part IV
24 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, income redistribution, labour economics, macroeconomics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality
In 2016, here’s some of what I wrote about the economic outlook in Illinois. And I shared the same observation when writing about California in 2018. There’s a somewhat famous quote from Adam Smith (“there is a great deal of ruin in a nation“) about the ability of a country to survive and withstand lots of […]
Americans Are Getting Richer, Part IV
When the Left and the Right start behaving in the same way, there’s nothing left of the Left
23 Jan 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, discrimination, economic history, economics of education, gender, International law, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, war and peace Tags: regressive left
I HAVE BEEN RESISTING the conclusion that New Zealand no longer possesses a “left-wing” movement. What the news media persists in referring to as “the Left” or “progressives” are no such thing. By any reasonable definition, the movements identified – or identifying themselves – as left-wing fail to measure up. What they truly are we […]
When the Left and the Right start behaving in the same way, there’s nothing left of the Left
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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