Nicola Willis vs Ruth Richardson? Alien vs Predator? Thankfully, everyone may now be having second thoughts. We all deserve better than a contest between these two over who can be the most socially tone-deaf advocate for small government.
Only Richardson could make Willis look relatively benign on tax, dent and spending policy, and that – as the PSA has suggested – may have been the original concept all along. As in…if you think we’re being treated poorly under current management, take a look at this cobwebbed relic of the early 1990s, and be grateful for small mercies.
For the record, New Zealand ‘s tax, debt and spending policies are already being managed conservatively by world standards – to the point where the lack of government stimulus by Willis has only deepened and prolonged the economic recession, with avoidable job losses, business closures, and people fleeing the country in record numbers. Meanwhile, over at the Taxpayers Union, Richardson has been clamouring for us to go further, faster and deeper down the spiral of doom.
If there is to be a debate, maybe it should be about… how come the ideas that Willis and Richardson represent are like the walking undead, in that not even the evidence of repeated failure can kill them.
Footnote One: Talking of the centre right’s dearth of new ideas…Bernard Hickey was dead right this week to point out the similarities between (a) National first repealing and then revamping Labour’s plans for the RMA, and (b) National first repealing and then coming up with a more cumbersome, more costly version of Labour’s Three Waters policy. To this one might add the cancellation of the iRex Cook Strait ferries, and their inferior replacements.
Apart from the added emphasis by National on private property rights, there is plenty of overlap in the Labour vs National versions of RMA reform. So it isn’t entirely surprising that Labour has since confirmed that a future Labour government won’t be repeating the cycle of repealing/rewriting the rules for resource management.
Footnote Two: Willis and Richardson arguing over how many angels can fit on a neo-liberal pinhead would not have comprised a significant “debate “on economic policy. In disturbingly similar fashion, Labour and National seem to be equally committed to the constraints of market orthodoxy. For a country that likes to think of itself as a nation of free thinkers, the options considered to be politically feasible are depressingly narrow. As Hickey concludes :
In my view, both sets of reinventions [of the RMA by Labour and National ] are performative, and won’t change the status quo that much because the key restraint on growth, the bi-partisan refusal to use the balance sheets of the Crown and councils to fund infrastructure renewal and expansion, remains in place.
To which I would add (a) the refusal to seriously consider the option of raising revenue via additional taxes on wealth, and the wealthy and (b) the disinterest of either major party in debating the wisdom of spending billions upon billions of dollars for our Defence forces to use offshore against imaginary threats, while our public services here at home are falling apart for lack of adequate funding.
Controlling the media messengers
So much for regulatory independence. Last weekend, Donald Trump let it be known that he would be “involved” in who is to be allowed to own Warner Discovery: will it be Netflix or Paramount? Given that Trump is already on the public record as (a) opposing the Netflix deal, and (b) favouring Paramount’s bid….why are we still talking about Netflix?
Reportedly, Paramount’s main stakeholder Larry Ellison has already been discussing with Trump officials which CNN hosts will be axed. Check out the link. The photo of Ellison and Trump speaks volumes.
Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder at Paramount… in at least one phone call [Ellison] engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar…
What we can still talk about is how the US news and entertainment industries are converging, and coming under the control of Trump’s friends and relations. As mentioned, the main stakeholder in Paramount is Oracle multi-billionaire and Trump BFF Larry Ellison, and the company’s CEO is Larry’s son, David Ellison. Larry Ellison’s other BFF is Benjamin Netanyahu who, as the Times of Israel has reported, has taken a vacation at Ellison’s holiday island.
To make things even more cosy, the Paramount bid is being co-financed by Affinity, the firm owned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. According to prior court filings, Affinity is 99 % financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and by Qatari and UAE money, via contacts that Kushner made while working as a senior adviser at the Trump White House.
On top of his share of the profits made by Affinity’s investments, Kushner also reportedly receives $40 million annually in management fees. Clearly, Paramount is aware that it isn’t a good look for Muslim-professing foreigners to be holding such a major stake in the US news and entertainment industry, so it has made some effort to create distance:
Paramount said in regulatory filings that these investors would forgo any governance in running Warner Bros. Discovery as well as board seats. It said in the filing that it had made these concessions to ease concerns about getting the deal approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, the interagency committee that assesses whether a deal poses national security concerns.
So that’s alright then. Given the Trump family’s business connections to the Saudi monarchy, no wonder Trump gave such a fulsome welcome recently to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at the White House, and was so dismissive of media questions about the decisive role that MBS had played in ordering the murder of the journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi.
Total Control
As the US drifts further into authoritarianism rule, consider the extent of control that Trump will have over the US media, via the Ellison family and other allies. Paramount already owns the CBS network, and – to widespread dismay – has appointed a pro-Israeli anti-woke activist called Bari Weiss as the editor in chief of CBS News. (One of Weiss’ first decisions has been to moderate a televised town hall meeting this weekend, featuring Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk.)
Moreover…on September 14, the Wall St Journal reported that the US and China have “reached the framework of a deal” for TikTok’s US operations to be sold to a consortium of investors led by Larry Ellison. Add it Up : CBS, CNN, and TikTok are all set to come under the direct control of an Ellison family with close financial links to Jared Kushner, and very close ties of allegiance to the Trump White House. This article by Techdirt’s Karl Bode sums up where we’re at:
Whether it’s Jeff Bezos lobotomizing the Washington Post, Elon Musk turning Twitter into a far right propaganda mill, or Larry Ellison buying CBS, CNN, and TikTok, the country’s shittiest right wing billionaires aren’t being subtle about their quest to dominate what’s left of U.S. media. And Trump’s FCC is paving the way by destroying whatever was left of our media consolidation rules.
After nabbing Paramount/CBS and a chunk of TikTok, the Ellison family is now setting its sight on Warner Brothers — or what’s left of Warner Brothers after decades of pointless, harmful mergers with AOL, AT&T, and Discovery.
Footnote One : Why is Warners up for sale at all ? That’s the very good question raised by David Dayen in this article. Warners is currently on a roll, financially, creatively and critically. As Dayen points out, the recent Golden Globe film and television nominations were dominated by Warners output: One Battle After Another, Sinners, The White Lotus etc. In a very bad year for Hollywood, Warners has been the shining exception. In an industry record, it had seven consecutive movie releases opening at $40million or more.
The main reason why Warners is vulnerable to Paramount’s hostile takeover bid is because it has been weakened by the fallout from the previous rounds of disastrous mergers cited above by Karl Bode. The downward spiral began with the Time Warner merger in 1990, was followed by the catastrophic merger with AOL, and then came the Discovery merger that put the widely-loathed David Zaslov at the helm as CEO:
These mergers created a horrific financial legacy: $53 billion in debt as of 2022. Each was attractive in its time to executives and corporate synergists, but bad for the actual business. The creative talent managed to thrive despite the mismanagement, building on the reputations of HBO and the Warner Bros studio. But the debt left the company in constant crisis. And the real driver of the merger wave was not the promise of creating a successful end product, but money. David Zaslav, who only took over WBD three years ago, is promised up to a $500 million payday if a sale closes..
Footnote Two: Here’s a sign of where the news is headed under the control of Trump’s acolytes. In a self-revealing comment around the 46 minute mark in this clip, Bari Weiss, the new boss of CBS News, cited an example of what she would regard as an ideally balanced news item on gun control: a debate between a former NRA publicist on one hand, and Trump loyalist (and Jeffrey Epstein associate) Alan Dershowitz on the other. If that is the ideal news balance, God save America.
Also in 2025….
IMO, this is one of the year’s best videos. For the “Gumshoe” track off his Rarely Do I Dream album, Trevor Powers aka Youth Lagoon came up with another haunting fusion of images, sound collage and music comparable to his past classics like “Prizefighter” and “Idaho Alien,” the 2023 track that re-launched his career.
The video for “Gumshoe” uses clips from some of his family’s recently re-discovered home movies as part of a road trip back to rural Alabama, and to some dark places in his childhood, including memories of a local murder. The time shifts, the blurriness of the vocals and the scraps of remarkable home footage are all deliberately at odds with the bleakness of the lyrics:
It was the world I had (We’ve been up in the tree, climbed down by the water)
Scenes I wish I’d never seen (Jack made a beeline, boy’s undercover)
The summer taught me that (the detective finds bite marks on the daughter)
Life’s a baseball bat to the jaw (and a bracelet somebody bought her)…
On a more upbeat note, here’s some techno dance music made by Baalti, a couple of Indian guys from New York, who say they’ve been inspired by the (extremely loud and colourful) sound system culture of West Bengal. Helpfully, Baalti have created a 10 track playlist as an introduction for Westerners to this West Bengali sound system genre. You can find it here.
Here’s a track called “Loose Leaf” by Baalti themselves, taken from their 2025 album Mela, which Google Translate tells me means a “festival” or “fairground” in Hindi. Since this cut is not (yet) on YouTube, I can only link to it here, via Soundcloud. Highly recommended.
Also from West Bengal…Rupa Biswas recorded “Aaj Shanibar” for a quickly forgotten 1982 album called Disco Jazz. Just before Covid, a track from that album called “Aaj Shanibar” was re-discovered by a prominent American indie musician – Dan Snaith, of the group Caribou- who first heard it on the soundtrack of a 2012 Indian romantic drama called Miss Lovely. At the age of 64, Rupa Biswas finally got her turn in the spotlight, and “Aaj Shanibar” has since racked up over two million views on YouTube: