The probability of Michael Cullen's capital gains tax (CGT) ever being implemented is close to zero.
Labour's plan was that Cullen's Tax Working Group (TWG) would unanimously recommend a modest new tax, Parliament would legislate for it to come into force in 2021 along with compensating tax cuts, and the 2020 election would be a referendum on a done deal, proposed not by politicians but by so-called experts.
If it opposed the CGT, National could be smeared for allegedly standing with the rich against the combined wisdom of the nation's taxation establishment.
It hasn't worked out this way. Cullen has recommended the world's most severe CGT, with a rate of 33 per cent for those earning over $70,000 a year in their ordinary job. Not unrelatedly, a quarter of the TWG rejected the proposal. The dissenters were perhaps New Zealand's most respected tax-policy guru Robin Oliver, well-regarded tax lawyer Joanne Hodge and Business NZ head Kirk Hope.
The upshot is that when Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson make decisions in April, they cannot claim to be reflecting the unanimous advice of so-called experts. They will have to choose one side over the other. This may be academic, because Ardern and Robertson will not get Cullen's CGT through Parliament this side of the election, or ever.
It was the exodus of the Old Testament that earned the ancient Israelites the description of “pilgrims and sojourners.” They were a semi-nomadic people who lived the life of what Harvey Cox once likened to a floating craps game. They moved from place to place. Even their church was a tent that had to be pitched and taken down repeatedly as they followed the lead of God in the wilderness.
This image figures prominently in the New Testament portrayal of the Incarnation. In John’s Gospel, it is written that the Logos, the divine Word, was “with God” and “was God” from the beginning, and “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The word that is translated here as dwelt literally means “tabernacled” or “pitched His tent” among us.
In this sense, it is Christ who is the ultimate Pilgrim. The Incarnation is the supreme sojourn. Christ left His heavenly home to enter into our pilgrimage in our behalf. His was in solidarity with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I love my homeland. Every time I travel abroad, I am happy to return to America. But the United States is an inn, a resting place in the midst of a higher journey, a road-stop on the way to my true home.
Coram Deo
Reflect on this glorious truth: God pitched His tent among us.
The Pope has been reported as saying some things which are, on the face of it, perverse. Now, we are very conscious that statements or opinions quoted out of context can easily be distorted. Maybe this is what has occurred here. Maybe not.
In a public statement the Pope has presented an argument that runs something like this:
There are many accusations being made against ordained church authorities these days
The Devil is the accuser of Christians.
Therefore, the accusers of Church ordained officers are of the Devil.
On the face of it, this is bizarre. Are we to conclude that when Paul accused Peter of grave sins which implicitly denied the Gospel of our Lord [Galatians 2: 11-21], he was doing the Devil's work? Now, it's possible that what the Pope said got lost in translation, as they say. But if so, the matter needs an expeditious clarification.
As the ancient proverb declares, those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. We ought to expect, therefore, successive iterations of madness, on the one hand, followed by shipwrecks and destruction, on the other. Where? Amongst whom?
Behold the madness of transgenderism as it insists upon denying reality in favour of their madcap wishes and desires. Fast forward . . .
Transgender Actor Asserts Existence of ‘Biologically Female Penis’
Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Hulu
11:08
A man’s penis becomes a female penis once a man declares himself to be transgender, says Indya Moore, one of the players in a transgender-themed TV show on FX network.
The declaration is built on the transgender claim that men who say they are women are actually women. But once the men are women, their bodies are women’s bodies. So men’s penises become female penises.
Moore extended the “female penis” claim by declaring the existence of ‘male vaginas,’ which are presumably carried by women who are living as men.
The “female penis” claim went viral because it spotlights the logic of the transgender ideology, which insists the Department of Justice must blur and forbid any legal or civic recognition of the biological distinctions between the two different and complementary male and female sexes.
This policy must be imposed to ensure that children and adults can easily discard their female or male sex by simply declaring they have an opposite-sex “gender,” or have a “gender identity” which is between male and female, say transgender activists.
A person’s “gender,” say activists, is their personal feeling about being female or male, or something in between. For example, Moore’s feelings are described as “binary,” or neither male nor female.
Moore’s feelings-are-more-important-than-biology logic was explained by anothertransgender writer:
Moore took the often-heard rallying cry “trans women are women” one step further: She argued that if trans women are biological women, by definition, a trans woman’s penis is “a biologically female penis.” That’s a radical point missing in mainstream discussions on trans bodies, as trans women are often made to feel as if they should be ashamed of their genitals if they don’t have a vagina.
“Don’t use science to justify your bigotry,” Moore tweeted at critics of the “female penis” claim. “The world is way too weird for that s**t.”
The transgender effort to suppress any recognition that men and women are different and complementary would not matter except for the movement’s political alliance with wealthy progressives and radical feminists who wish to destroy the political power of the male-and-female family.
For example, editors at theNew York Timesinviteda February 7 op-ed which smeared women who reject the political claim that gender is more important than biology. Author Sophie Lewis described the vast majority of women as “terfs”:
… the most vocal trans-exclusionary voices are, ostensibly, “feminist” ones, and anti-trans lobbying is a mainstream activity. Case in point: Ms. Parker told the podcast “Feminist Current” that she’d changed her thinking on trans women after spending time on Mumsnet, a site where parents exchange tips on toilet training and how to get their children to eat vegetables. If such a place sounds benign, consider the words of British writer Edie Miller: “Mumsnet is to British transphobia,” she wrote “what 4Chan is to American fascism.”
The term coined to identify women like Ms. Parker and Dr. Long is TERF, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In Britain, TERFs are a powerful force. If, in the United States, the mainstream media has been alarmingly ready to hear “both sides” on the question of trans people’s right to exist, in Britain, TERFs have effectively succeeded in framing the question of trans rights entirely around their own concerns: that is, how these rights for others could contribute to “female erasure.” Many prominent figures in British journalism and politics have been TERFs; British TV has made a sport of endlessly hosting their lurid rudeness and styling it as courage; British newspapers seemingly never tire of broadsides against the menace of “gender ideology.” (With time, the term TERF has become a catchall for all anti-trans feminists, radical or not.)
Lewis’ radical support for the transgender ideology is logical because she wants to minimize the role of male-and-female families. A review of her book,Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, says:
Rather than making [birth] surrogacy illegal or allowing it to continue as is, Sophie Lewis argues we should be looking to radically transform it. Surrogates should be put front and center, and their rights to the babies they gestate should be expanded to acknowledge that they are more than mere vessels. In doing so we can break down our assumptions that children necessarily belong to those whose genetics they share.
This might sound like a radical proposal but expanding our idea of who children belong to would be a good thing. Taking collective responsibility for children, rather than only caring for the ones we share DNA with, would radically transform notions of kinship. Adopting this expanded concept of surrogacy helps us to see that it always, as the saying goes, takes a village to raise a child.
But Lewis’ ‘Terf’ smear is also aimed at lesbians who wish to maintain a clear distinction between women and men. For example, former tennis star Martina Navratilova is being slammed by political activists for her growing opposition to transgenderism in sports. TheGuardianreportedFebruary:
The former Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova has been criticised for “disturbing, upsetting, and deeply transphobic” comments after she argued that allowing transgender women [men] to compete in women’s sporting tournaments was “insane and cheating”.
The tennis player and gay rights campaigner first drew criticism from equalities activists and trans athletes when she tweeted in December: “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”
…
“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to [fathering] babies if he so desires.
“It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”
TheGuardianalso saw fit to quote a man who is living as a woman describing Navratilova as beset by “transphobia,” as if the former tennis star is mentally ill.
Democrats argue that It is “cruel and unscientific” to define each person’s legal sex by biology. But if sex is not defined by biology/human nature, it will be redefined by politicians & the transgender lobby - regardless of damage to women, men & children http://bit.ly/2DxntFb
Navratilova’s criticism of the transgender ideology is increasingly echoed by women who say the ideology will erase society’s understanding of women — and of lesbians — as biologically, sexually, and socially very different from men.
This “biology matters” argument is also being made by Andrew Sullivan, a British-born gay advocate who led the political push to allow single-sex marriages. In a February article titled “The Nature of Sex,” Sullivan argues that a pending Democratic-drafted bill which provides legal recognition and rights to people who try to live as members of the opposite sex:
could put all single-sex institutions, events, or groups in legal jeopardy. It could deny lesbians their own unique safe space, free from any trace of men. The bill, in other words, “undermines the fundamental legal groundwork for recognizing and combating sex-based oppression and sex discrimination against women and girls.”
The transgender push to create legal rights for people living as members of the opposite sex would also threaten the legal rights won by gays and lesbians, Sullivan writes:
If you abandon biology in the matter of sex and gender altogether, you may help trans people live fuller, less conflicted lives; but you also undermine the very meaning of homosexuality. If you follow the current ideology of gender as entirely fluid, you actually subvert and undermine core arguments in defense of gay rights. “A gay man loves and desires other men, and a lesbian desires and loves other women,” explains Sky Gilbert, a drag queen. “This defines the existential state of being gay. If there is no such thing as ‘male’ or ‘female,’ the entire self-definition of gay identity, which we have spent generations seeking to validate and protect from bigots, collapses.” Contemporary transgender ideology is not a complement to gay rights; in some ways it is in active opposition to them.
And the truth is that many lesbians and gay men are quite attached to the concept of sex as a natural, biological, material thing. Yes, we are very well aware that sex can be expressed in many different ways. A drag queen and a rugby player are both biologically men, with different expressions of gender. Indeed, a drag queen can also be a rugby player and express his gender identity in a variety of ways, depending on time and place. But he is still a man. And gay men are defined by our attraction to our own biological sex. We are men and attracted to other men. If the concept of a man is deconstructed, so that someone without a penis is a man, then homosexuality itself is deconstructed. Transgender people pose no threat to us, and the vast majority of gay men and lesbians wholeheartedly support protections for transgender people. But transgenderist ideology — including postmodern conceptions of sex and gender — is indeed a threat to homosexuality, because it is a threat to biological sex as a concept.
A growing percentage of progressives oppose any recognition of the reality that men and women are different. But conservatives and feminists are championing the normal view that women and men are different, Sullivan wrote:Pol
It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but [in late January], four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected. For this, they were given a rousing round of applause by the Trump supporters, religious-right members, natural law theorists, and conservative intellectuals who comprised much of the crowd. If you think I’ve just discovered an extremely potent strain of weed and am hallucinating, check out the video of the event.
Polls show the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents.
In 2017, Obama told NPR that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Multiple polls show that most Americans wish to help and comfort people who think they are a member of the opposite sex, even as they also reject the transgender ideology’s claim that a person’s legal sex is determined by their feeling of “gender identity,” not by biology. A U.K. survey shows a similar mix of some sympathy for people with lopsided opposition to the ideology.
The transgender movement is diverse, so its different factions have different goals and priorities. It includes sexual liberationists, progressives, feminists who wish to blur distinctions between the two sexes, and people who glamorize the distinctions between the two sexes. It includes high-profile children, people who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex, and people trying to “detransition” back to their sex, men who demand sex from lesbians, masculine autogynephiles who say are entitled to women’s’ rights, wealthy donors, politicians, political professionals, and revenue-seeking drug-companies and medical service providers.
Transgender advocates claim that two million Americans say they are transgender to a greater or lesser extent. But very few people who describe themselves as transgender undergo cosmetic surgery of the genitals. Only about 4,118 Americans surgically altered their bodies in hospitals from 2000 to 2014 to appear like members of the opposite sex, according to a pro-transgender medical study.
Yet the gender ideology is rapidly gaining power, aided by huge donations from wealthy individuals and medical companies. In Ohio, for example, in February, a judge forced parents of a teenage girl to give up custody so she can begin a lifetime of drug treatments and surgery that will allow her to appear as a male.
The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their male-and-female civic society around the idea of “gender identity” has already attacked and cracked many of the popular social rules that help Americans manage the cooperation and competition among and between complementary, different, and equal men and women.
Transgender billionaire tells GOP estb. that he will stop donating if GOP keeps supporting laws which recognize the two sexes as equal, different & complementary. But Trump is aggressively defending those laws. http://bit.ly/2CZ3pKe
