Kiwiblog

ACT have released their list. The top six are:

1. Dr Jamie Whyte
2. Kenneth Wang
3. Robin Grieve
4. Beth Houlbrooke
5. Don Nicolson
6. Stephen Berry
7. Dasha Kovalenko

If they get 1.2% of the vote (they got 1.1% last time) and retain Epsom, then Jamie Whyte comes in. At 2.0% they also get Kenneth Wang. They would need 6.0% to get Dasha Kovalenko in, which sadly will not happen.

An interesting display of how our exports have changed over 35 years, by NZ T&E. It shows the benefits of free trade agreements.

The Herald reports:

Deep sea drilling would continue under a Labour Government, but with more safety regulations in case it goes “very very wrong”, Labour’s energy and resources spokesman David Shearer said this morning.

Mr Shearer appeared on The Nation this morning to talk about Labour’s oil drilling policy.

“We support oil drilling [and] we have done in the past, there’s no major change there,” he said.

Here’s the problem. Shearer supports it and says it will continue as Energy Spokesperson. But their environmental spokesperson will put out releases condemning it, and their candidates lead marches against it. They try to be all things to all people.

Andrea Vance provides some translations. Extracts:

“I’m relatively relaxed about this . . .”

Because my chief of staff is working like billy-o to find an official we can pin the blame on.

“I have been very clear.”

Beep beep beep, look out voters – I’m backing into a U-turn.

“The real question here . . . “

I don’t like your question, so I’ll waffle on about something I do want to talk about.

“What I’m hearing from hard-working Kiwis as I travel up and down the country . . .”

Actually, it’s what the data from our extensive polling and focus groups says.

“That’s a matter for the party. That’s an operational matter.”

I might be in charge but someone else can take the fall for this mess.

“Talking about rising levels of immigration is not racist.”

But I’m happy for all the racists to vote for me.

“After a hard day campaigning there’s nothing I like more than a cold beer/fish and chips with the family.”

Until the cameras are off and I can crack open that $175 bottle of Central Otago pinot noir.

“I’m here to talk about our new policy.”

Please stop asking me questions about whether I have the support of my party.

“There are questions the Government must answer/We are calling for an independent inquiry.”

We can’t quite prove what we are insinuating but it looks dodgy and we needed to put out a press release.

“My caucus is united . . .”

. . . By the fact they’d rather have someone else in charge.

“The only poll that matters is on September 20.”

We’re screwed.

Andrea is very cynical, but not unjustifiably so

The Taranaki Daily News reports:

Trevor Mallard just can’t let go of his fascination with resurrecting the moa.

Yesterday Inglewood, a town long associated with the extinct flightless bird, came to the attention of the Labour MP.

He was in Taranaki yesterday to talk about sport and recreation, but was fascinated to learn Inglewood was briefly known as Moatown in the mid-1870s.

Last week Mallard caused a ruffle when he told his electorate that breakthroughs in modern science could bring back the species and they could one day roam the hills above Wainuiomata.

And, if the moa was brought back from the dead then Inglewood could be a great place for some to live, he said.

“It may well be that within careful enclosures some of the smaller moa will be there at the time of our grandchildren or great grandchildren,” he said. Not the big ones though, because the farmers in Taranaki might not want the birds near their cattle, he said.

It would be a great tourism market for his district, but Taranaki could cash in on that too.

I love it. Trevor is now going up and down the country talking about Labour’s plans to bring back the moa. Cunliffe will be furious, but can’t do anything about it without causing a public major rift.

One of the big ones. Tax.

Taxes are one of the most tangible links between the government and civil society. We all pay taxes in some form, and in exchange we expect the government to provide certain goods and services: roads, infrastructure, the courts, law enforcement, education, and support for society’s most vulnerable.
 
From this perspective, the oft-quoted declaration ‘taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society’, widely attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, rings true.
 
However, it is a common misconception that a dollar taxed is a dollar that can be spent by government on goods and services. In reality, a dollar taxed is a dollar that must be spent on collecting tax, ensuring tax compliance, public administration of policy and, of course, the actual public policy.
 
Besides, increases in tax rates do not automatically lead to an increase in tax revenue, as illustrated by the Laffer curve. Named after Arthur Laffer, this curve popularised the notion that higher tax rates may actually cause the tax base to shrink so much that tax revenues will decline. Conversely, a cut in tax rates may increase the tax base so much that tax revenues increase.
 
How so?
 
Taxes distort behaviour by influencing the personal decisions people make about their work and consumption. For instance, people who would prefer to work longer hours or at a higher pay may work less or refuse a pay rise to avoid being taxed at a higher rate. Higher personal income taxes encourage workers to substitute their preference for work to economic activities that they would otherwise not prefer.
 
This is known as the deadweight loss of taxation, where the tax system causes individuals to pursue actions they would otherwise not prefer. To gain maximum tax revenue, there must be a careful balance between low rates with a greater tax base, and high rates with a smaller tax base.
 
There is also the issue of tax incidence, which describes who bears the cost of the tax. For example, increasing the tax on high income earners may not necessarily mean that they bear the cost of the tax. If workers are receiving less money in their pocket, for an equal or greater amount of work, employers may feel compelled to raise their wages to ensure employees receive the same take-home pay. Thus it is employers who bear the burden of a higher rate of income tax.
 
Taxes are not the price we pay for a civilised society. At best they are the price we pay for a civilised government. But they are also the price of overly bureaucratic procedures, unpredictable outcomes, and the loss of freedom to make our own decisions.

Stuff reports:

An Australian report that lays the blame for rising house prices on a lack of land for development, rather than a “price bubble”, could have reached the same conclusions here, a free-market think tank says.

The report, by the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies, said Australian house prices had risen at an annual rate 3 per cent higher than inflation since the 1970s.

Author Stephen Kirchner said foreign and domestic property investors had been made a scapegoat when the real problem was zoning and planning rules. They restricted the availability of building land and prevented the more intensive development of existing residential areas.

The supply squeeze in Australia was compounded by taxes such as stamp duty and capital gains tax, he said.

Australian house prices have risen at much the same level as New Zealand. What is useful to note is Australia has had a Capital Gains Tax since the 1980s.

So when Labour goes on about how a CGT will magically mean house prices decrease, ask them why has that not worked in Australia?

The solution in both countries is the same. Make more land available. It is about as basic economics as you can get. Artificially restrict the supply of land, and of course the price of land increase.

Stuff reports:

Germany has told the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the country in a dramatic display of anger from Chancellor Angela Merkel at the behaviour of a close ally after officials unearthed two suspected US spies.

The scandal has chilled relations with Washington to levels not seen since Merkel’s predecessor opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It follows allegations that Merkel herself, who grew up in Stasi-ridden East Germany, was among thousands of Germans whose mobile phones have been bugged by American agents.

“Spying on allies … is a waste of energy,” the chancellor said in her most pointed public remarks yet on the issue. “We have so many problems, we should focus on the important things.” …

US government sources said the official – whom neither side named – was Berlin station chief for the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. A German source said the man would face possible forcible expulsion if he did not leave voluntarily.

This is an unprecedented fall out between allies. I can’t say I blame the Germans. Spying on your opponents and enemies, but not your allies.

The Privileges Committee has reported back to the House on two issues.

The first is around the fiasco around the GCSB report leak. It sets out four principles:

1. There should be a presumption that information held on parliamentary information and security systems should not be released. 
2. Individual members should retain complete control over the release of any information that relates to them. That is, material relating to individual members should only be released where that member specifically agrees to its release. 
3. Journalists working in the parliamentary precinct should retain complete control over the release of any information that relates to them. That is, material relating to a journalist or group of journalists who work in the parliamentary precinct should only be released with their specific authorisation. 
4. For information requests that do not relate to an individual member, the Speaker of the House of Representatives should be the ultimate decision-maker.

They seem very sound principles.

They also report back on issues around Police and SIS access. Mainly just a series of clarifications.

Stuff reports:

A new milk could threaten New Zealand’s $17 billion dairy export industry.

Made in the lab from yeast, and due to be on shelves in 2016, it will be a product virtually indistinguishable from cows’ milk.

Because it will have the same proteins, fats, sugars, vitamins and minerals, it will also taste the same, according to Perumal Gandhi, co-founder of Californian research and development company Muufri.

But the milk will be able to be made without the typical cholesterol, allergen lactose and bacteria in cows’ milk, meaning it will be healthier and won’t need to be refrigerated, giving it a much longer shelf-life.

Soon after its introduction, it would become far cheaper than its cow-made rival, Gandhi said.

I don’t think in the short term, people are going to swap to artificial milk. But we should not discount what the future may hold. As we crack more and more DNA and the like, our ability to create things will expand exponentially.

Stuff reports:

The Christchurch City Council is unlikely to face consequences after a food-licensing blunder affected businesses, Local Government Minister Paula Bennett says.

All cafes, supermarkets and food manufacturers in Christchurch were left operating illegally for two weeks after food licences expired on June 30 and none were renewed by the council.

Bennett said the council would not face intervention as a result of the delay but would be under the spotlight and monitored for further botchups.

Delays in renewal were timing and administration, which the council said it had now fixed.

“The council has some unique challenges to manage on top of its core business requirements,” Bennett said.

“While I don’t believe this delay indicates the council has wider issues or that there is a need for intervention, I’ve asked officials to continue monitoring the council’s work to ensure all is on track.”

Hospitality NZ Canterbury president Peter Morrison said the blunder was “unbelievable”.

“It’s diabolical, considering all the trouble they’ve had with the building consents, that they couldn’t get a simple thing like this right,” he said.

Now consider Labour is vowing to abolish CERA in 2016 and make their mate Lianne’s council responsible for the entire rebuild.

Considering the Council lost its consenting accreditation due to incompetence, and now has failed to perform another statutory duty, can you imagine the chaos that would eventuate if they were in charge of everything.

Stuff reports:

Online auction site Wheedle is closing, less than two years after it was set up to take on Trade Me. 

The site’s sole funder, Mainfreight co-founder and rich-lister Neil Graham, decided against further investment in the company, he said in a message to Wheedle members tonight.

“Our aim was to create a commercially successful site where people could buy and sell online without costing users an arm and a leg. 

“More than 80,000 members backed us and we’re very proud of that achievement.”

With respect Wheedle could almost become a text book case of how not to do a launch. Competing with Trade Me would have been challenging for the best of competitors, but Wheedle never got it together.

Launched in October 2012, the site aimed to undercut Trade Me by charging a flat-rate $1 fee on items that sold for more than $20. 

People don’t care much about the fees. They care about the price they’ll get.

NBR has a good feature on what went wrong.

Claire Trevett writes the second half of the detailed look by the Herald into the Opposition Leader – as they also did in 2008. Her story is focused on Cunliffe’s political years. Some extracts and comments:

Former President Mike Williams first impressions of David Cunliffe were not as favourable. It was at the party’s 1999 campaign launch and Cunliffe turned up with bright red hair – the result of an overzealous hairdresser for a fundraiser whom Cunliffe claims was “a Tory.”

It ensured he got a reputation for self-promotion before he even entered Parliament. The Herald awarded him “best self promoter,” reporting he also handed out copies of the ‘Cunliffe Courier’ – featuring 22 photos of himself – at the campaign launch.

That’s a great idea. Labour’s manifesto should be the same this year.

Cunliffe caught the media’s attention, if not always for the right reasons. He was dubbed the ‘toyboy minister” and “nakedly ambitious.” Observations of his talent were usually followed by a comment about his ambition and ego. He was mocked for describing his own maiden speech as “passionate.” In 2002, his supporters turned up to the Labour Party campaign launch waving placards with his name on them.

Bit of a pattern.

Cunliffe and Tamihere gravitated towards each other, part of a group of junior MPs including Clayton Cosgrove and Damien O’Connor, and dubbed themselves the “Mods” – short for Modernisers. They met in each other’s offices for drinks and discussed policies and the direction Labour might take in the longer term, post-Clark. They decided to recruit others and Tamihere says Cunliffe returned with loyal Clarkists. Whether it was innocent or deliberate, he was seen to have dobbed them in. …

Tamihere says there was no big blow out and they did maintain a professional relationship. Asked about the Mods’ goals now, Tamihere laughs and says “well, you always go down there with those heady ideals.”
“He’s an extraordinarily talented chap but you never get to see the real David. You get to see the David that he thinks you want to see. And that’s his problem.”

This is what is interesting. There is no doubt Cunliffe was on the right of the party, yet now he is trying to position himself to the left of Helen Clark.

After a lengthy review and two year stand-off with Telecom, Cabinet moved to break the company’s near monopoly by forcing it to open its local network to competitors in 2006.

I thought Cunliffe handled the portfolio very well, and he had a good legacy with the operational separation of Telecom. It was long overdue.

Cunliffe had worked with Michael Cullen since he was a junior MP, but Cullen declined to be interviewed for this piece. Cullen publicly backed Grant Robertson in the leadership challenge in 2013 – and quipped at the NZ Post Book Awards at the time he expected next year’s entries to include Cunliffe’s new book “The Dummies Guide to Walking on Water: How I learned from Jesus’ Mistakes.”

Cunliffe made it too clear he wanted Cullen’s job. Funnily enough I think Cunliffe would be an able Finance Minister.

Somewhere along the line Cunliffe earned the nickname ‘Silent ‘T’ – because of the difference inserting a ‘t’ into the relevant part of his surname would make.

That nickname started before Cunliffe was a Minister. No one knows which of hil colleagues first coined the name, but most think it was Clayton Cosgrove.

I can relate a funny story about the nickname. Was once at an MPs house and a reference was made to his nickname of Silent T. Then a nine year old boy piped up and asked why do people call him “David Cunliffety”. We all pissed ourselves laughing as it would not have been appropiate to correct Master Nine’s assumption about where the T was inserted.

Cunliffe also had to deal with the complex, politically sensitive portfolios of immigration and health in his final years as minister. He undertook a major review of immigration settings

He did that very well also. Prior to his law changes, many illegal migrants could game the system for years and years with numerous appeals. Cunliffe introduced a much better and simplified system for dealing with immigration decisions and appeals.

Cunliffe was at the function when Helen Clark ceded defeat and announced she would step down.

Immediately confronted by the media, he said he had no intention of running to be leader.

However, he now reveals that he did subsequently put his name forward at one stage because he was encouraged to do so. He will not say who encouraged him and said he did not push the matter because he acknowledged he did not have the experience in Opposition. “There was, I think, a fairly widely shared view that perhaps later on it might be appropriate for me to have a chance to lead the party.”

Tizard says she spoke to him at the time. “My view was that it was probably too soon, but my comment was ‘if you think you’ve got the numbers, go for it. If not, get the numbers.’”

Interesting that Cunliffe did look at standing, encouraged by Tizard. It was no secret that Clark wanted Cunliffe to become her successor, so he could keep out Goff.

One minister at the time said Clark had proposed Cunliffe as deputy, but Goff made it clear he wanted Annette King.

Never appoint a Deputy who wants to take over from you. David Shearer learn this the hard way.

Cunliffe was the finance spokesman when Goff stepped on the stage in the election campaign at the end of those three years for the Press newspaper’s debate with Key. Goff held until his ground until Key asked where the money to pay for Labour’s spending promises was coming from with the repeated “show me the money” refrain.

Goff foundered, failing to even bring up the capital gains tax revenue which had been released. After the debate, Goff called Parker off the campaign trail to help with the full costings. They were released in full within days, indicating they were at least almost ready.

Why did he not call in the Finance Spokesperson?

Goff says he does not blame Cunliffe for it. “I take responsibility for myself, I don’t blame other people.”

That’s his public stance. His private stance is very different.

Cunliffe’s campaign was an open pitch to the union movement and activist left. He embraced socialism, and followed it up with a brace of promises, many around wage increases and working conditions. One former colleague observed it was a canny move to target the unions. “If you want to be the boss of that mob you have to look at who’s got the organisational muscle 24/7 to organise for you.”

Boss of the mob – how well phrased.

Asked what the biggest mistake of his leadership has been, Cunliffe says it was the use of that trust. 

We should all thank a certain blogger at The Standard for his fine work in setting it up, and never twigging it might be a bad idea.

Cunliffe’s deputy David Parker publicly backed Shearer in 2011, but refused to reveal who he supported in the 2013 run-off. “I felt whoever was leader, there was a need to build bridges. And I thought I was one of the ones who should do that.”

My understanding is Parker voted for Jones, but Cunliffe was his second choice ahead of Robertson.

Cunliffe says he intends to stay on if Labour is in Opposition after the election when he faces a confidence vote. His supporters agree – Tizard points to Helen Clark staying on after losing in 1996. 

This is the real battle ahead.

There’s also an interesting article on Karen Price.

The Herald reports:

Homeowners and landlords could see hundreds of dollars added to their rates bills under Labour proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the disaster insurance regime.

The policy unveiled by Labour’s Earthquake Commission (EQC) spokesman Clayton Cosgrove would see EQC levies gathered by taking them off insurance premiums and adding them to rates bills so all residential properties are covered.

The levy is currently $207 a year for most homes but Mr Cosgrove said Labour would also lift the maximum payout by EQC from its current $100,000 cap.

Which will see the levy increase. So that may mean you rates end up going up by over $300 a year.

He acknowledged that the resulting increase in EQC’s total liability would mean the levy would probably have to rise but that insurance premiums would not necessarily fall to reflect the fact they would not include the EQC levy.

“I’ve never seen an insurance premium go down.”

So Labour is proposing that our rates go up by $300 or so but that our insurance premiums don’t go down.

Another winning policy.

Now this is very interesting. The meta-meta study of 50,000 studies of 139 factors influencing education outcomes had class size at 106th with an effect score of 0.21. At 107th was charter schools with an effect score of 0.20.

So reducing class sizes has much the same impact as charter schools – a mild improvement.

So how on earth can Labour be vowing to abolish charter schools, yet put hundreds of millions into reducing class sizes?

The answer is the former policy results in fewer teachers in unions, and the latter results in more teachers in unions.

The Maxim Institute has a very thoughtful discussion paper on poverty. They pose a number of questions, and also outline eight different ways you can measure poverty. They eight ways are:

1. Average income threshold – a percentage of mean or median income
2. Consumption expenditure – a percentage of amount spent on consumption compared to average household
3. Budget standards – based on a budget judged high enough to avoid deprivation
4. Component and multiplier – based on amount needed for an essential such as food, and multiplied
5. Subjective measures – based on self-assessment as poor
6.  Benefit-based/statutory measures – based on government definition of minimum income
7. Material deprivation indices – based on actually lacking essential necessities
8. Multi-dimensional measurement of poverty, deprivation or social exclusion – a mixture of the above and more

No measure is prefect. I don’t like the income measures because they treat all households as identical in terms of needs, and they are more about income spread than actual poverty. They also avoid the effect of tax, as they tend to be on before tax incomes.

My preference is No 7.  Stats NZ already do this – an occasional survey asking if families can afford stuff such as more than two pairs of shes for kids, transport to school etc etc. This is relatively objective, and measures actual deprivation rather than merely equality of income.

Gallup reports:

 Fewer Americans are satisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives compared with seven years ago — dropping 12 percentage points from 91% in 2006 to 79% in 2013. In that same period, the percentage of Americans dissatisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives more than doubled, from 9% to 21%.

The rise of big Government.

And how about other countries:

Gallup asks people in more than 120 countries each year whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives. In 2006, the U.S. ranked among the highest in the world for people reporting satisfaction with their level of freedom. After seven years and a 12-point decline, the U.S. no longer makes the top quartile worldwide.

So who is top:

That’s a good table to top.

Eric Crampton blogs:

So, the playbook over the last 30-40 years or so: set minor policy changes every few years that work incrementally to de-normalise smoking and tobacco. Restrict use in some public places that seem like protection of non-smokers at first, then extend it outwards not to protect non-smokers, but to stigmatise smokers. Eventually smokers are so marginalised that a full ban becomes politically palatable. First you de-normalise, then further regulate, then ban. And, at every step, deny that the next step’s already planned. Until it’s too late to matter.

Now, if you follow alcohol policy, how often have you heard this one: “Alcohol is no ordinary commodity”? Or, that advertising, availability at some event, shops with visible signage, or brand sponsorship normalise alcohol consumption and so should be restricted or banned? There’s a lot of focus on making normal alcohol consumption not seem normal. There might be a reason for that.

A lot of these policy documents will draw the parallel to tobacco before claiming that, unlike in the case of tobacco, they’re just trying to hit heavy or harmful consumption and so full-on tobacco-style restrictions aren’t needed. But every year, we move further through the list of tobacco controls that the anti-alcohol folks want applied to alcohol too.

Richard Edwards’s post helps show that we’re not building strawmen when we warn about slippery slopes. There’s a direct mechanism in which each regulation makes the marginal political cost of the next one a bit smaller, helping to facilitate it. And there’s pretty clearly a planned effort to push through the incremental steps on the way to the end goals: each makes the next seem less radical. Slippery slopes are only logical fallacies if there aren’t these kinds of mechanisms. 

They want to ban smoking, ban sugar and inevitably ban alcohol. It is a slippery slope, and we ignore it at our peril.

Meet your next Justice Minister people. The Herald reports:

Labour’s justice spokesman Andrew Little did not think the party’s proposal would lead to more innocent people being convicted.

“I don’t see why. You’re assuming that there is a propensity to lay false complaints. There is no evidence pointing to that.”

So Labour’s next Justice Minister thinks that an accusation is all you need to convict someone, as there are no false complaints.

Why doesn’t he go the whole hog, and save us the expense of trials. You’re accused, and you’re automatically guilty. Bang.

Again I urge everyone to make sure people understand that if Labour is elected, you will need to prove your innocence if you have sex with someone and are accused of rape.

David Cunliffe has started to back away from the policy, but Andrew Little has confirmed it is official policy and is obviously still extremely wedded to it.

I would have thought Mr Little would not have to think too far back in Labour’s recent past to think of how stupid it is to have a presumption of guilt based on allegation.

I am staggered that this policy got approved by the Labour Party. It is horrendous and wrong. Unless they rule it out totally, then don’t vote for them if you believe in the presumption of innocence.

The Herald reports:

Labour has raised the possibility of the taxpayer shouldering an even greater proportion of Christchurch rebuild costs, saying it would sit down with Christchurch Council to review the existing cost sharing agreement if it won the election.

I guess $10 billion or $20 billion or whatever the figure is isn’t enough. Labour wants to bail out the high spending Mayor. If the Council saved  $100 million on not restoring the Town Hall that would be better than sending the bill to taxpayers.

John Armstrong writes:

Murray McCully will not be resigning from the Cabinet over his ministry’s inept handling of the alleged sex attack involving a staff member at the Malaysian High Commission.

He is under no constitutional obligation to do so. He is under no substantial political pressure (as yet) to do so. He has done nothing that is politically shady or morally dubious which would give his opponents the grounds for demanding that he does so.

Even if the foreign minister did offer his resignation, it is most unlikely that John Key would accept it. In short, it is going to take much more than the victim in the alleged attack calling on him to step down for that to actually happen.

Interesting that the politician who has said the most insensitive things about the case is Hone Harawira for saying it is all a fuss about bugger all. Yet no one is calling on him to resign – just Murray McCully, who is actually the MP who ended up getting Malaysia to agree to extradite the alleged attacker.

A fascinating post at the Washington Post by Ali Khedery:

To understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since 2006.

I have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him, for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure member of parliament, I was among the very few Americans in Baghdad who took his phone calls. In 2006, I helped introduce him to the U.S. ambassador, recommending him as a promising option for prime minister. In 2008, I organized his medevac when he fell ill, and I accompanied him for treatment in London, spending 18 hours a day with him at Wellington Hospital. In 2009, I lobbied skeptical regional royals to support Maliki’s government.

By 2010, however, I was urging the vice president of the United States and the White House senior staff to withdraw their support for Maliki. I had come to realize that if he remained in office, he would create a divisive, despotic and sectarian government that would rip the country apart and devastate American interests.

America stuck by Maliki. As a result, we now face strategic defeat in Iraq and perhaps in the broader Middle East.

Khedery argues that if the US has stopped supporting Maliki in 2010, then what has happened in the last few weeks may not have occured.

After the December 2005 parliamentary elections, U.S. Embassy officials combed the Iraqi elite for a leader who could crush the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, battle al-Qaeda, and unite Iraqis under the banner of nationalism and inclusive government. My colleague Jeffrey Beals and I were among the few Arabic-speaking Americans on good terms with the country’s leading figures. The only man we knew with any chance to win support from all Iraqi factions — and who seemed likely to be an effective leader — was Maliki. We argued that he would be acceptable to Iraq’s Shiite Islamists, around 50 percent of the population; that he was hard-working, decisive and largely free of corruption; and that he was politically weak and thus dependent on cooperating with other Iraqi leaders to hold together a coalition. 

Khedery says Maliki was the right pick in 2005, but then things went wrong:

With the Obama administration vowing to end Bush’s “dumb war,” and the continued distraction of the global economic crisis, Maliki seized an opportunity. He began a systematic campaign to destroy the Iraqi state and replace it with his private office and his political party. He sacked professional generals and replaced them with those personally loyal to him. He coerced Iraq’s chief justice to bar some of his rivals from participating in the elections in March 2010. After the results were announced and Maliki lost to a moderate, pro-Western coalition encompassing all of Iraq’s major ethno-sectarian groups, the judge issued a ruling that awarded Maliki the first chance to form a government, ushering in more tensions and violence.

So he started to go rogue around 2009.

After helping to bring him to power in 2006, I argued in 2010 that Maliki had to go. I felt guilty lobbying against my friend Abu Isra, but this was not personal. Vital U.S. interests were on the line. Thousands of American and Iraqi lives had been lost and trillions of dollars had been spent to help advance our national security, not the ambitions of one man or one party. The constitutional process had to be safeguarded, and we needed a sophisticated, unifying, economics-minded leader to rebuild Iraq after the security-focused Maliki crushed the militias and al-Qaeda.

In conversations with visiting White House senior staff members, the ambassador, the generals and other colleagues, I suggested Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi as a successor. A former Baathist, moderate Shiite Islamist and French-educated economist who had served as finance minister, Abdul Mahdi maintained excellent relations with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds as well as with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

And how high up did the lobbying go?

On Sept. 1, 2010, Vice President Biden was in Baghdad for the change-of-command ceremony that would see the departure of Gen. Ray Odierno and the arrival of Gen. Lloyd Austin as commander of U.S. forces. That night, at a dinner at the ambassador’s residence that included Biden, his staff, the generals and senior embassy officials, I made a brief but impassioned argument against Maliki and for the need to respect the constitutional process. But the vice president said Maliki was the only option. Indeed, the following month he would tell top U.S. officials, “I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” referring to the status-of-forces agreement that would allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraq past 2011.

Biden was wrong, as he so often is.

But all the lobbying was for naught. By November, the White House had settled on its disastrous Iraq strategy. The Iraqi constitutional process and election results would be ignored, and America would throw its full support behind Maliki.

So they can’t say they were not warned. What happened next:

Within a short span, Maliki’s police state effectively purged most of them from politics, parking American-supplied M1A1 tanks outside the Sunni leaders’ homes before arresting them. Within hours of the withdrawal of U.S. forces in December 2011, Maliki sought the arrest of his longtime rival Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, eventually sentencing him to death in absentia. The purge of Finance Minister Rafea al-Essawi followed a year later.

So what are we left with:

In short, Maliki’s one-man, one-Dawa-party Iraq looks a lot like Hussein’s one-man, one-Baath Party Iraq. But at least Hussein helped contain a strategic American enemy: Iran. And Washington didn’t spend $1 trillion propping him up. There is not much “democracy” left if one man and one party with close links to Iran control the judiciary, police, army, intelligence services, oil revenue, treasury and the central bank. Under these circumstances, renewed ethno-sectarian civil war in Iraq was not a possibility. It was a certainty.

I resigned in protest on Dec. 31, 2010. 

If only they had listened to him. What happened was not inevitable after the fall of Saddam. It came about through bad decisions.