So what does the left DO about the poor?

National's very modest DPB policy has provoked cries from Helen Clark that it is beneficiary bashing, from the Greens that this is "denying kids having their parents at home" (because taxpayers earn money at home of course), and Idiot Savant saying it's "beating up on the poor".

Do the left really think those on the other side of the spectrum hate the poor, want to do violence to them, want to let them starve and laugh? Are they that detached from reality that they think they have a monopoly on compassion?

Well the truth is that most of them can't claim a monopoly on compassion since they themselves have none. When the Nats introduced some modest tax cuts in the late 1990s, did the left say "we'll donate our extra tax cuts to welfare beneficiaries?". No, they did their usual demand that the "state should care" and demand that everyone be forced to care.

This time it's the same old story. With some distinct exceptions, far too many on the left sit in their Wadestown, Parnell or Mt. Victoria homes, sipping fine wines, chattering amongst themselves about how "awful" those nasty National, ACT people are - how they are racist (Idiot Savant of course thinks racism is when the state ceases to care about race) and how sexist they are, and how they probably want to laugh at poverty.

You see you can take two approaches if you care about people in poverty:
a) Leave it to your taxes and the state to do a fine job of lifting people out of the cycle of poverty, despair and lack of aspiration;
b) Donate to charity, participate in charities, give of your time, money, other property, wisdom to help.

So if you care, what do you do? It's about whether you think a bureaucrat handing out a benefit is more valuable than donating a bunch of books for kids in homes without them, or more valuable than donating time to helplines for kids in need, or more valuable than teaching adult education classes in literacy for next to nothing.

So next time someone on the left says "more money should be spent" on the poor, ask what that person is doing directly for them? Ask them if they have donated every tax cut they ever got to charity. Be astonished if you get answers little more than an uncomfortable, "Umm... well" and maybe an admission to the odd donation.

Then you'll realise that the amount they care for the poor is inversely related to the amount they hate the rich.

4 point DPB policy for the Nats

1. Anyone currently on the DPB can claim no more benefit for any additional children whilst on it.
2. DPB becomes same as unemployment benefit when youngest child reaches school age (almost got that one)
3. 1 year warning that no DPB will be granted to anyone unwilling to name (accurately) other liable parent.
4. No one convicted of a serious violent or sexual offence entitled to receive any welfare benefits whatsoever.

Baby steps really

and Helen Clark? Well, when she spends any time appreciating what it is like to work, raise a family and pay taxes, then she might be someone for whom some of us think she might give a damn. Her political career is partly built on support from people who live off of the back of others, which she facilitates.

Greens seek to nationalise voluntary sector

The Green Party has released its policy on the "community and voluntary sector", which by definition is a sector which, from a libertarian perspective, exists because people choose to participate in it and pay for it (notwithstanding that some in that sector are hardened statists).

The policy, in essence, is about forcing you to pay to support that sector. Phrases like "larger budget allocation", "Enhance mechanisms and resourcing to allow policy input from community organizations", "Fund a sector-led, independent group or group of groups to work with Government".

Then it wants to force you to fund a NEW competitor to Kiwibank "Provide the starting capital for a community owned banking network..."

Remember every time the Greens say "support" they mean to do it by putting their hand in your wallet one way or another.

How is it then a "voluntary sector"?

If you are part of this sector, maybe a car club, or promote free trade, or promote laissez-faire capitalism, or private property rights, or even of a religion, you think you'd get part of this booty?

Takes the Greens to nationalise the non-state sector doesn't it?

Forgotten Posts from the past: Christopher Hitchens on Solzhenitsyn

"Every now and then it happens. The state or the system encounters an individual who, bafflingly, maddeningly, absurdly, cannot be broken. Should they manage to survive, such heroes have a good chance of outliving the state or the system that so grossly underestimated them. Examples are rather precious and relatively few, and they include Nelson Mandela refusing an offer to be released from jail (unless and until all other political detainees were also freed) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn having to be deported from his country of birth against his will, even though he had become—and had been before—a prisoner there....

To have fought his way into Hitler's East Prussia as a proud Red Army soldier in the harshest war on record, to have been arrested and incarcerated for a chance indiscretion, to have served a full sentence of servitude and been released on the very day that Stalin died, and then to have developed cancer and known the whole rigor and misery of a Soviet-era isolation hospital—what could you fear after that?...

As time went by, he metamorphosed more and more into a classic Russian Orthodox chauvinist, whose work became more wordy and propagandistic and—shall we be polite?—idiosyncratic with every passing year.

more in Slate, about the man who helped expose the death and despair of the Soviet system, who later became a supporter of the post-Soviet authoritarian system that now grips Russia in its cold, dark, strangle of fiction and fear.

Big ego small man

Who are you going to believe?

Professor Richard Dawkins: BSc Zoology, MA and D.Phil, D.Sc all of Oxford. Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and five honorary doctorates. Author of 9 books

Christopher Hitchens: BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writer for Slate Author of 17 books and co-author/editor of 9 others.

or Ian Wishart, New Zealand talkback radio host, author of numerous books of limited NZ circulation.

Yes I'm afraid I had to laugh when I saw that Wishart had written a book called "The Divinity Code" in a vain attempt to confront both Dawkins and Hitchens. I wont buy it yet, as I am sure I'll be able to pick it up in a bargain book sale somewhere in NZ next time I'm there.

Dawkins and Hitchens wont be losing sleep, indeed I doubt they will even give Wishart the dignity of bothering to read his book, if they know the man exists at all.

Wishart's website says it all about his credibility, with the hard hitting publications he has endorsing it:

"A Critically-Acclaimed Writer:

”The closest thing to a John Grisham novel, but it is the real thing” - Waikato Times

A writer who is prepared to tackle the difficult subjects...well researched
and very compelling” - The Advocate

“Wishart..is exceptionally thorough...skillfully blends [an] informative picture” - Evening Standard

“His research is deep and thorough” - Wairarapa Times Age"

Yep, the Waikato Times, Wairarapa Times-Age, global authorities on... the Waikato and Wairarapa. "The Advocate" which surely isn't the gay magazine from the USA. When I type in the phrase to Google I just get "Wishart's quote" hmmm. Could it be the newspaper from Burnie, Tasmania? Could it be the Northern Advocate from Whangarei? Yes probably.

Then the Evening Standard. Wow. A quote that is dotted too, so Googling it doesn't quite work. Must be the Evening Standard in London right? Or am I right in suspecting it is the Manawatu Evening Standard?

Now call me cynical, but I don't regard four provincial New Zealand newspapers to be authorities on a book, and able to tell me whether "research is deep and thorough". Not even the NZ Herald or the Dominion Post, let alone the Times (that's London), Guardian, New York Times or Daily Telegraph, or even the Age in Melbourne. Wishart can't get a good review (or a review?) from a newspaper from any city with a population of more than 200,000.

I know there are thinkers of a religious persuasion who can make cogent, well researched arguments for supernatural beliefs, even though I am unlikely to agree with them, but Wishart?

Save your money, wait till they are piled up like Mike Moore's and Jim Bolger's books have been, in bargain bins - and then have a good laugh.