You're your own sex offender

The United States sadly has far too many stories like this. Sadly too many on the conservative right is only too quick to resist any reforms to address it.

Cases of child sexual abuse are always cause for concern, when children are violated and harmed it rightfully causes outrage. The law is based on a simple precept, that those under the age of consent only engage in illegal sexual behaviour because they have been forced or persuaded by some perverted adult. It is, of course, a nonsense. The law draws a line for certainty and to protect (and deter) against such activity, but it doesn't draw a line between sexual innocence and precocity.

This is why law and order conservatives ought to think carefully before they embark on mandatory sentences, mandatory sex offenders' registers and the like.

A New Jersey girl of 15 has been arrested for taking nude photos of herself and distributing them. You see she has a cellphone with a camera, as do many (if not most) her age, and so she snapped away and forwarded them on to some of her peers. Incredibly, she has spent a weekend in jail and is charged with producing child pornography (illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material), a second-degree felony, and possession of criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony. She could face being a registered sex offender and being required to register her address for 20 years, and being screened for a whole host of employment.

She is being treated no differently than if a man twice her age had done it. Why? Well combine the understandable visceral outrage about sex offences against minors, a complete wilful blindness about the sexuality of minors (who have always shown off and experimented in fairly harmless and embarrassing ways) and zero tolerance for crime, and these things slip in.

Worse "the investigation into the incident remains open, including exploring whether charges will be filed against the minors who received the photos." Yes, you didn't even ask for it and you're a criminal!

Yes, there are problems when children are violated, yes it needs to be deterred, but this?

and it isn't just because it is in Licking Valley - I kid you not.

Vile extension of Green population policy

Is this.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. It's an organisation that believes the best future will be when people decide not to breed, so the earth is without humanity at all. It's logo is disturbingly Orwellian.

" Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom. When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Nature's "experiments" have done throughout the eons. "

Could there be a philosophy that is more anti-life, anti-achievement, anti-reason? Now the difference between this movement and, those who would murder to achieve this end is the MEANS not the end. The website goes further, in language that wouldn't be out of place on the Green Party website:

"The Movement is voluntary. We are promoting reproductive freedom, not "population control".

The Movement is life-affirming and will benefit all life. We are not advocating suicide, nor an increase in human deaths.

The Movement is pro-child. Every existing child deserves a good life.

The Movement is pro-parent. Existing children are in need of good parents.

The Movement is opposed to bad stuff."

It just wants humanity to die off.

Go on, ask your local Green candidate if it wouldn't be better if nobody ever had children. Ask if the earth would be a better place if there were no people around to appreciate it. Ask why your local Green candidate has chosen to breed, if he or she has done so.

Banality of Green population policy

So what are the Greens up to?

A population policy (not family policy)- which of course in itself implies that one is needed. The overall tone is disturbingly collectivist and Leninist in outlook. It harks of course to the nonsense that is Malthus. Statements like "Ministry of the Environment current modelling estimates put our carrying capacity at 5.7 million" imply that somehow if that population is above that "something bad will happen". One of the principles is "New Zealand's population should not exceed the ecological carrying capacity of the country".

What does that mean? Who does this "carrying"? Besides which, consider the central planning behind this principle and the whole policy.

It continues... "Uneven regional distribution of the population will be remedied through regional development measures" Yes, vee cannot have zee uneven population diztribution can we comrades? No. It vill be REMEDIED! Who distributes this population? Actually it is individual decisions - people choose to live where they want. It's called freedom you planning zealots. What the hell is a "regional development measure" other than perhaps:
- Laws banning development where people want to live?
- Subsidies bribing people to develop where they don't want to live?
- Taxes discouraging people from living where they do want to live?

You'd think property prices would be a clue, but no, the authoritarian planning fetishists don't believe that's enough.

It continues "Informed decisions about family size and spacing will be made by the parents concerned" Will they?? You see I would have thought that when Keith Locke says "it would be quite wrong to take from this that we are asking parents to have less kids" that he's wrong.

Read it yourself.

Of course i'd make one simple point - if you care so much about the size of families and people breeding, why they hell do you want to increase subsidies for people who do breed?

Let parents make their own decisions and, amazingly, pay for them.

Either your stupid, or you have some fetish for centrally planning and managing everything, control freaks that you are. You LIKE people being dependent on the state - which you think is some proxy parent or version of society. You LIKE making people pay to your beloved leviathan state, telling people how to live their lives, how best to live, how to meet with the plans of "society".

It's about time this benevolent, loving the trees nonsense was revealed for what it is, a barely shrouded desire to grow a big Nanny State that has policies on absolutely everything.

It ISN'T based on results, it ISN'T based on empirical evidence, it ISN'T based on science, it ISN'T based on anything beyond an ideological fervour to control.

It is statism through and through.

New Zealand doesn't need a population policy, it doesn't need you telling families how to live their lives when you want to force GOOD families to pay more taxes to pay welfare to all families, including abusive, negligent, lazy and even criminal ones. You treat everyone the same, except you want to tax the successful and control them, and pay more money to the least successful, the ones that aren't responsible. You want the state to reward the bad, and penalise the good.

Green policy promotes violence - but it is the violence of the state regulating, taxing, compelling and threatening. It promotes state control and authoritarianism, despite proclaiming peace and justice. It is, basically, a bunch of do-gooding control freaks in love with the idea of pushing people around with the state, instead of convincing people to make different choices, voluntarily, and tolerating when they don't.

The Green Party is, undoubtedly, the party of an intrusive invasive and disturbingly ubiquitous Nanny State.

Greens and the dole

Ah remember the days when Sue Bradford was a professional protestor. Once heading the "union" called the "Unemployed Workers' Union" (which since I was a kid I always found oxymoronic - you're not a worker if you're not actually working), which was simply a leftwing protest group.

Now of course she defends the "right" of people to receive an income confiscated from other people. According to the NZ Herald, she doesn't like the suggestion by the Maori Party that the unemployment benefit be scrapped. Tariana Turia said "I'm opposed to the dole. I have to be very frank with you - I don't think it is healthy for the spirit of our people, to be getting money for doing nothing".

Indeed, although make work schemes may only be slightly better - they are at least paying people for doing, what may be lowly productive work, but still work.

By contrast, defender of the demanding welfare recipients Sue Bradford describes the Green Party policies which are pretty simple:
- Government to create jobs (presumably by taking money from those with jobs);
- Nobody be "forced" to work for a living;
- Increase welfare benefits (so you get more for not working for a living);
- Forcing taxpayers to pay for the voluntary sector.

The Greens believe in more state dependency, they believe that you should be forced to pay for people to live and those people shouldn't be forced to do anything for it.

Bradford clearly thinks people on benefits are useless saying abolishing the dole would mean "we will see family breakdown, child poverty, crime, begging and homelessness at levels way beyond anything we can conceive of at present". Family breakdown doesn't happen at record levels? Beneficiaries are criminals we are paying off to not rob us? Which of course means Sue wouldn't actually do anything herself to help these poor people - she wants you to be forced to help them, in exchange for them doing nothing.


Tariana Turia, to her credit, has seen the poverty of ambition and aspiration this has produced for two generations. Although the Maori Party is full of statists, and lacks any common philosophical thread (other than a primary concern for Maori), it does have the advantage of being, somewhat, open minded. Although let's not use the railways for jobs shall we?

The Greens think, cynically, that they can get the vote of unemployed Maori, because they will protect the dole and increase it, and so that would be cool then right?

No. Even at the last election, when National campaigned against the Maori seats, National won more party votes than the racist, identity politics laden Greens, in every Maori seat. That tells you how enthused about the Greens Maori voters are.

Key cuts to bureaucracy?

Hmmm it swings all over the place doesn't it - National policy I mean. One week government spending cuts aren't going to happen, and now the NZ Herald states "National would ask state sector bosses to find savings in their departments" and John Key "would call state sector chief executives in to talk with him after the election and ask them for a "line by line" of their expenditure with an aim to make savings."It's very important that we get value for money because that's what New Zealanders are being forced to do around their kitchen tables every day,""

Great stuff! Just what is needed, in fact not dissimilar to what I recommended a while ago. Get every departmental head to justify its existence and budget, and cut projects.

You know it is good policy because one of the biggest advocates of making you pay for people who don't actually produce anything you want to pay for growing bureaucracy, the PSA, is bleeting utter nonsense "If people lose their jobs because of the crisis, they will need support from public services to ensure they can feed their families and to try and get them back into the workforce".

Excuse me? If you lose your job, it is important that we continue to tax you on what you earn, invested and buy so that we can give you help you weren't willing to pay for in the first place? Besides that - how many policy advisors help people feed their families?

No, the PSA should shut up and be accountable to the people who pay their wages - they are called taxpayers, and if they vote for a change in government one reason will be because they are fed up with the PSA thinking taxpayers can be milked endlessly to pay for their jobs.