10 November 2010

The state and children

One of the perennial issues that fires up politicians, the media and many of the public in the UK, as with many places, is when a case of horrendous abuse and neglect of children is discovered.  More often than not one or more parents are implicated in it, and accusations are thrown around about why it wasn't detected earlier.  

The role of the state in this is enforcer of criminal law, but it is in the difficult area of crimes against children by their parents and guardians.   Children inherently do not have the rights and powers of adults, because their rights are held in trust by their parents/guardians.   The opportunities for children to reach beyond these people to seek help for violent or sexual abuse are varied, but may be severely impaired by abusive adults who threaten or apply violence and detention upon them if they say anything.   The situation of the scared small helpless child being beaten or raped, and fearful to tell others is one of the most appalling and repulsive images for most sane adults.  

Until comparatively recently, many children in those situations had to rely upon other relatives to rescue them or for trauma to be severe enough to be obvious to a doctor, if medical attention was made available.   Even in such cases, sadistic parents/guardians might lie, "she fell down the stairs" excuses abound.  Sexual crimes in particular being difficult to prove, or even link to an individual in an age before DNA evidence.   The word of abused children alone was often not believed.  

Yet most children were and are raised by parents/guardians who love them, who don't beat and abuse them, and while never perfect (who is?), they genuinely acted in the child's best interests.  Such children would be fed, clothed, kept warm, given medical attention, taken to school and given the attention, love and dedication of normal loving parents.   In other words, the family unit works, most of the time.  

Yet the cases when it failed came to increasing attention in the 1970s and 1980s.   It started with physical abuse, as more women in particular came to no longer tolerate men beating them up (and their children).   It then came with sexual abuse, and the truly disturbing issue of incestual child rape (when children wouldn't be believed because their father was a "pillar of society") which gained attention.

The road to hell was then paved with the good intentions of those who wanted to protect children.  I recall in the 1980s a NZ Telethon which claimed that 1 in 3 girls in NZ were sexually abused by their fathers.   A bogus statistic sourced not from prosecutions or even charges, but by writers in feminist social policy.  Some of the definitions of "abuse" included "seeing dad naked" - which is highly likely to occur at some point, given families can share bathrooms, or children can walk into bedrooms uninvited etc.  

Of course there was a wider agenda going on.  The focus was on men committing abuse (which was no doubt backed up by statistics) and the focus on taking children away from fathers.  A similar philosophy was taking over in the UK, Australia and the US, including the now largely discredited theory that children who say "no" are scared of saying "yes" when asked about abuse.

The approach was rather simple.  A child was placed in an interview with a psychologist, who would progressively ask leading questions as to whether "certain things happened" that would constitute abuse.  If the child kept saying "no" this wouldn't be believed, until finally the child, having figured out that she was giving the wrong answer (and being uncomfortable with being constantly questioned) said "yes".  At that point there was glee from the psychologist, and the apparatus of state would come into play and split up a family, putting it through criminal investigation and trial.

The snake-oil merchants and pseuds who perpetrated this nonsense caused enormous harm and damage to parents and children.   "False memory syndrome" was a similar theory, which implied that people who were abused "blanked out the memory" (true in the case of very severe ongoing trauma), so when they couldn't remember any abuse, they would be probed more until they finally "remembered" something that could have been interpreted as abuse (e.g. "I was on dad's lap and I can't remember if he might have had an erection or not, I don't know, he could've, but I don't remember noticing it, though I might not have known what it was to remember it").    

So whilst some were looking for abuse at every corner, every time a real case would appear (maybe once a year or so), there would be horrors that "not enough had been done".  

Well in the UK today plenty is done, although Ofsted (the bureaucracy responsible for "children's services" in the UK) claims 119 children suffered serious injury or death due to a failure  to intervene.  Meanwhile, the untold story is that of cases of intervention that are traumatic and dead wrong.

You see under pressure to ensure every child is safe, authorities in the UK respond hysterically to suspicions and allegations, and put parents through processes where it is assumed that they are guilty, until proven innocent.   Christopher Booker has been highlighting these issues in two articles in the Daily Telegraph:

in the latest year for which we have figures (2008), of 7,340 applications for care orders made by social workers, only 20 were refused.  Meanwhile, the children themselves are handed over to foster homes, which receive £400 a week or £20,000 a year for each child, and where many are intensely unhappy and not infrequently abused. Foster carers and social workers routinely conspire to tell bewildered children that their parents neither love them nor want them back. Children and parents meet at rigorously supervised "contact sessions", where any expression of affection or attempt to discuss why the children have been taken from home may be punished by termination of the session or denial of further contact.

"one Court of Appeal judge recently compared the conduct of a council's social workers to what went on in "Stalin's Russia or Mao's China". But in general this cruel, dishonest and venal system continues on its way, hidden from view, accountable to nobody but itself."

Data privacy laws prevent anyone getting any decent information about specific cases, and parents also know that if they talk about their experiences, they are under further suspicion.  "Kafka-esque" is one description of it  

Parents are forbidden to talk to the media or even to their MPs about the injustice they are suffering. Several times in recent months, councils have sought injunctions to prohibit me reporting anything at all about a case, even though no person or even the council itself would be identified. More than once, parents have been threatened with contempt of court and prison if they talk to me or anyone else about how they are being treated.

He writes about a case of a family that fled to northern Cyprus after social workers took their child off them because a neighbour complained about the parents having a noisy argument.  Grandparents on one side of the family had decided to work with social workers and got custody of the child, and the whole mess unravelled.  After the interim care order had taken away their child they wondered:

Last June, puzzled at why the interim care order had not been renewed as the law requires, Carol called the court. She was told that the order had lapsed three months earlier. When her husband confirmed this by a second call to the court, Carol drove to her in-laws’ home to explain that there was no longer any legal reason why her daughter could not be returned to her. Her mother-in-law protested, but the child was so overjoyed to go home that she ran to get into her mother’s car. The mother-in-law stood in front of the car but Carol reversed and drove off.   When her daughter said she was hungry, they stopped at a motorway service station. The grandmother had alerted the police, the car number was picked up by a camera and before long Carol (who was pregnant again) was arrested, handcuffed and pushed into a police van. At the police station, she collapsed and was taken to hospital.

What is clear is that many thousands of people are involved in a state industry of child protection that assumes intervention is preferable to investigation and assessment.   The common law right to assume someone is innocent until proven guilty is under attack, and children are assumed to be in imminent danger when there is no objective evidence as to that danger.  More importantly, the risk and harm involved in forcibly separating children from their parents in these circumstances is almost completely underplayed.

What is needed is to consider objectively what the role of the state should be in protecting children.   It certainly should intervene when there is sufficient likelihood that failure to do so will put the child in danger of violent or sexual assault - (and I don't mean a smack, i mean a beating).

That isn't a threshold of balance of probabilities, it isn't a threshold of beyond reasonable doubt (that's for the courts), but it does mean accepting that sometimes children wont be saved.   Yet it is better that this be the case than for the state to recklessly damage families and harm children by intervening when it shouldn't.   Police forces may have washed their hands of assessing families in favour of child protection workers, but how well placed are they to make judgments about intervening below criminal standards of proof.

The culture and philosophy behind child protection needs a serious investigation.  The priority given to protecting children should also include an assumption that it is best children stay with their parents/guardians unless there is enough prima facie evidence that they are criminally abusing the child.  That doesn't mean shouting, it doesn't mean being drunk, it doesn't mean seeing mum and dad naked, it doesn't mean accepting hearsay as enough reason to intervene.

Moreover, some serious thought needs to be given about whether it remains appropriate for the state to subsidise the raising of children.   The clearest message to adults should be that if you breed, it is a cost upon you to raise children - they will cost part of your income - YOUR income.  You wont get extra money for extra kids, or a bigger house.  You will have to cope.   If you don't like it, then don't breed.  If you breed accidentally then put up with it, or give up the child for adoption.  

If it seems harsh to abolish it, it only needs 10 months worth of warning that no new applications for benefit for children will be accepted, and people will be on their own if they have more kids.   The existing benefits can be frozen nominally.   The quid pro quo is that taxes can be cut.  

The welfare state pays people to breed, it rewards fecundity, yet the same state seeks to punish if it gets a hint that children are not being treated "as they should be".   The very same state relies on taxes from the vast bulk of families who never create a single problem.  

At one time the state let families be autonomous and people daren't intervene in their neighbours affairs - the Fritzl case in Austria being an extreme example of what happens when people become completely atomised from each other.   However things have moved too far towards a culture of assuming that when allegations are raised, they are true.   It will never be perfect, there will always be children who aren't saved, there will always be families who are unfairly and brutally split because of false allegations and assumptions, but a free society should always presume innocence first.

Humans first, not animals or the supernatural

I don't say it enough.

I detest cancer, I detest the fear of cancer.

I thoroughly embrace and endorse all those who develop pharmaceuticals, ontological procedures, stem cell treatment and other research to eradicate this heartless scourge.

I detest those who interfere with such development because they care more about the brief lives of animals than the lives of humans who would be saved suffering and death from it.

I detest those human hating environmentalist  Zeus's who treat those who engage in the bio-chemistry of genetic engineering like Prometheus, and do all they can to spread their lies of fear and blind hatred of science, through their Dark Ages worship of the "natural".   Cells growing out of control and taking over a human being is fucking natural you fools.

I detest those religious believers who treat embryonic stem cells as if they are equivalent to human beings, and who seek to interfere with that research.

Most of all I am fed up with having to face the fear of cancer in loved ones again and again.

This time it better not be.

09 November 2010

McCarten a ranting fool

For some time Matt McCarten has had a profile in New Zealand politics, because he has been able to express himself rather well.   For he has not been much of a success story, having been President of the New Labour Party then the now virtually defunct Alliance Party.   Bear in mind the Alliance peaked in vote in 1993, when first past the post made it a safe protest vote at 18%, 1996 saw it drop to just over 10% and when it was almost certain to get into power in 1999 it dropped to just under 8%.   After losing its personality cult leader of Jim Anderton, McCarten's Alliance fell out of Parliament in 2002.  Quite why he still has a column in the NZ Herald remains a mystery, and the Herald should think very carefully about whether he still deserves it after his latest rant.  For rant is all it can be described as, being as devoid of fact and pithy analysis as many talkback callers.

We start with a headline that tells us that McCarten basically doesn't believe in liberal democracy.  Quite something for a man who has had such high level involvement in a party that sought power and was part of a coalition government for one term.  The "idiots rule" at poll booths.  Unlike Matt, who knows better.   Not that many of us who comment in politics don't sometimes wonder why people vote as they do, but for him to suggest that voters are stupid implies he is better than they are, and should make their decisions for them.   I guess given his political heritage that may not be all that surprising.

Of course he doesn't mean New Zealand voters (yet) but rather Americans.  Nothing like bashing a whole nationality of people, particularly Americans.  I mean had he said Indians, or Chinese, or Kenyans or Samoans or... but he wouldn't would he?  It's ok to bash people according to their nationality because in Matt's world white Americans have power, and can be insulted and denigrated.   Not that he would tolerate anyone saying people of his nationality are stupid with "naivete and proud ignorance" (sic).

Then he has his own vision of the Bush years "Two years ago the Republicans, led by that boofhead, George Bush the younger, idiotically ran their own form of Rogernomics: giving the rich huge tax refunds; slashing public services".  Matt did you actually follow US public policy over that period or just fit it into your binary left-right framework that fits New Zealand rather well, but doesn't fit the US?  Where do punitive tariffs on steel imports fit into Rogernomics, where does bailing out banks, where does expanding state education ("No Child Left Behind" was a bipartisan initiative with that known "Republican" Ted Kennedy), where does increasing state spending and deficits fit into Rogernomics Matt?  Yes there was a tax cut, which applied from middle to upper incomes, but slashing public services?  No. Any privatisations? No, even though USPS, Amtrak and the FAA are all easy targets.  

No, you see Matt is dumbing down US politics so you can understand it, except it's so dumb he's wrong.  It is why the Tea Party opposed so many Republican nominations for the mid term elections and why the Tea Party has specifically rejected the past politics of both main parties.   Such details confuse Matt, he obviously forgot Rob Muldoon was one of New Zealand's most socialist Prime Ministers, because he opposed him at the time.

Matt ignores that "going to war against two countries" was in part retaliation for 9/11.   Of course he would rather the US sit back, take 9/11, feel guilty and let the Taliban be emboldened and maintain their totalitarian rule in Afghanistan without interruption.   He would deny it, but that is precisely the implication of his statement.

He continues to be wilfully blind on Obama "."He used his majority in both houses of Congress to get an economic stimulus to save greedy capitalists from themselves and then introduced a health system to cover just about everyone who got sick".  Actually Matt, the Bush Administration was playing big spend ups and bailouts first, but you were ignoring things at the time.  The "health system" is compulsory health insurance, which you opposed when it was actually Roger Douglas's policy for New Zealand in a slightly different form.   Too complex I know, just blank it all out Matt.

"Obama also saved millions of skilled jobs by nationalising the car industry" Steady on Matt, keep a tissue handy.  Your economic illiteracy only gets you excited by seeing money taken off of millions of people somehow "saving jobs" by going to a few thousand.

"The liberals and progressives have been sidelined to a large degree. In New Zealand, the power of corporations and wealthy individuals in United States politics seems extraordinary" Yes you noticed how rich all those Tea Party supporters and American voters are.  Oh that's right, they didn't decide things really did they?  The US media was completely against Obama from the start, not that you'd notice this on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, PBS, New York Times or the LA Times etc, but Matt doesn't bother consuming much foreign news, obviously.

"Can you imagine a corporation in this country being able to spend as much money as they liked to get a policy they want adopted, or unlimited funds to get a favourite candidate elected?"  You mean like the campaign for electoral reform?  Oh you mean spending their own money as much as they liked - their own money.   However, you think it isn't their money do you?  You think anyone with money must have taken it from someone somehow.   Bit of envy is it, or just disbelief as to how free people actually function on a grand scale?

"the calibre of the "teabag party" Republican candidates are just plain scary. Many of their serious contenders oppose abortion openly, even in cases of child rape or incest on the basis that it is "God's plan". One of them opposed masturbation. Others argued that if they didn't get elected their supporters would take up arms to overthrow the country ."

Many? Really Matt?  Or is that just your own spin again? Yes that's right.  One opposed masturbation once yes, but it wasn't her policy platform, and your party had Alamein Kopu - one of Parliament's greatest non-entities, and screaming Pam Corkery, an enormous intellect there.   Maybe had you quoted the Tea Party website which had only three policies you might have had some substance there: fiscal responsibility, smaller government and lower taxes.   Hard to paint that as hysterical madness isn't it?
"Attendees at their rallies carried assault weapons" How many Matt? Do a handful at hundreds of rallies count at significant?  Does this not happen with Democrats? 

"The leader of the Congress Republicans campaigned actively for a candidate who dressed in Nazi regalia,"  Yes as a joke Matt, and your Sandra Lee once compared what happened to Maori as a Holocaust.  Given Obama's past links to far-left radicals and a pastor who blamed the US for 9/11 and made numerous anti-semitic remarks, you might want to look in your own ideological backyard.  

Then, finally, Matt sees this as advice for Phil Goff!  "Working people need a party with specific visionary policies. Merely being a more pastel version of the other party won't get you elected next year, Phil."

Why not? It worked for John Key, he was Labour lite par excellence.  Your party had a vision, and it didn't get close to the 5% threshold once it lost its "great leader" Jim Anderton.  

The message Matt didn't get from this is that many Americans became scared at vast overspending by government of THEIR money (Matt doesn't understand that taxpayers think their money is theirs!) and borrowing ever more that will have to be paid off.  He didn't get that maybe a lot of Americans WANT more of their money back, and don't like ever growing government doing more for them.

You see Matt, while you and your ideological compadres were thinking the USSR was simply an alternative way of looking at things, and it was best to be neutral in the Cold War, Americans by and large did not.

It would help if you took down the hammer and sickle in your brain and opened your eyes.  You're more prejudiced than most Republicans, you're more stupid than many of them too because you can't even engage in basic research or read sufficiently widely to figure out what was going on in the US.

US voters rejected Obama because he was elected on a vapid bubble of hype, empty slogans of "change" and "can we fix it, yes we can".   There was nothing behind this but the hype of believing one man could make people's lives better.   That bubble has been burst, and Americans fear being pushed into second place by an Administration that keeps spending far more money than it gets in taxes.

Sadly, because you can't think beyond your ranting leftwing cage, you spout out empty nonsense which has at best a few grains of truth in it.

06 November 2010

ACC - Another reason to hate Nick Smith's politics


"he poured cold water on speculation that workplace accident insurance might be opened up to full competition from private insurers after an ACC "stocktake" completed in June by a group led by former Labour Party Finance Minister David Caygill. Its report has not been made public.

Dr Smith said opening the business to competition would be "a very major decision and, consistent with the John Key pragmatism and cautiousness, we are not in any hurry".

Could you be more of a spineless hypocrite if you tried?

You VOTED FOR opening the workplace accident insurance market up to competition when National was last in government.  You VOTED AGAINST returning it to a statutory monopoly, and now you are in charge of it you have the testicular fortitude of a mouse.

What has changed Nick? The rest of the developed world has open markets for accident insurance, for both workplace and motor vehicles.  New Zealand once led the world in reform, deregulation and opening state monopolies up to competition.   

You've shown you're little better than the Jim Andertons, Jeanette Fitzsimons and the Winston Peters, scared that without nanny state running everything, people will make the wrong decisions.
Just join Labour and be done with it, you'd be happier there.

05 November 2010

Greens think smokers are just so stupid and pathetic

Nothing shows the Green Party up for the authoritarian control freaks they are than this press release with this statement:

We need to get smokes out of our homes and out of our shops,” Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said. 

So blatantly collectivist, so blatantly uninterested in personal responsibility, choice and property rights.  

Who is this "we" Metiria?  Why do I have to do anything as a non-smoker?  Why should I have anything to do with what other adults do in their homes and their shops?

What are "our homes" and "our shops"?  They are NOT your homes or shops.  YOUR homes and shops are the ones you own, not everyone elses.  Property rights still exist in New Zealand.  It is not some grand socialist uber-state where everyone is responsible for everyone else.  

"Too often the focus is on punishing smokers and not controlling the industry that profits from the drug"  Oh and the Greens want smokers to have the right to smoke on their own property or to allow smoking on their own property, including restaurants and bars?  No. The Greens like punishing smokers too.
She has taken upon herself the role of Big Mother, given that Cindy "Stalin" Kiro no longer has he position:

"Mrs Turei said her main focus was on caring for New Zealand’s babies and children.
“This means giving our wahine, our mothers, all the support they need to quit and to stay smoke free."

New Zealand's babies and children?  They don't belong to the state, or the nation or country or whatever collective entity you want to ascribe to them.  They belong to their parents and guardians.  NOT you.  They are not "our wahine, our mothers".   After all, over 90% don't even vote for you.  
Feel free to give them support Metiria.  Through your own efforts and money.   However, you should stop treating smokers as stupid, pathetic and incompetent children who need you to protect them from their own actions.  How patronising and disgusting it is to think of yourself as better placed to make their decisions for them.

The only people who can get tobacco out of their homes and shops are the people who own them.  Feel free to try to convince them, but get the hell out of the way if they tell you where to go.   Yet the problem with the Greens is that they don't believe in peace, they don't believe in non-violence.  They warmly embrace the violence of Nanny State taking people's money, telling them what to do in their shops, and treating them like children.

I say this as someone who personally loathes tobacco, hates the smell of it and who has seen people I love suffer the consequences of smoking.   However, as much as I would not shed a tear if tobacco became a thing of the past, I find far more threatening the finger wagging patronising petty fascism behind the Greens treating people like they are children.

It makes one want to light up.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile the Netherlands has taken a step towards freedom according to the Daily Telegraph.  The new coalition government, which includes the Party for Freedom (the much maligned party of Geert Wilders who is more a libertarian than anything else despite the braindead media thinking he is aligned to neo-fascists) has abolished the smoking ban for owner-operator pubs.  In other words pubs with no staff.  It is a small step, but it shouldn't be debated.  It is simple.  It is private property.  If you own a pub, then you can decided if you or your patrons smoke there.   It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.  If you don't like it, don't go there.

Want growth? Get a spatial plan

Yes that's what the Green/ACT government thinks.

The headline is "Spatial Plan will ensure economic growth for Auckland".

The main space I can find is between the ears of the press secretaries of Nick Smith and Rodney Hide that have let such empty nonsense escape their offices.  It plunges new shallows of vapidity, reaches new epic heights of failure and demonstrates once again that this government is devoid of philosophical challenge to the leftwing, planning obsessed arrogance of the past.

The press release is so empty that you could drive a train through it, and it shows once and for all that Nick Smith, the Green Party member in Cabinet, is driving policy.

There is more substance between an electron and the nucleus of an atom than this piece of pontificating waffle

"One of the most important roles of the Auckland Council will be to articulate the 20-30 year vision for Auckland through the spatial plan"

Really?  What happens if it doesn't happen? Will there not be economic growth?  Indeed when has ANY local government successfully forecast economic activity by sector, location and the like ever?  Did the local government plans of 20 years ago talk about the internet and online economy?  Of course not.  Did the local government plans of 40 years ago talk about an economy driven by services and tourism from China and India?  Hardly.  So why is it important?  
Take this piece of Sir Humphreyism.. "Cabinet agreed the spatial plan is the key vehicle for developing an integrated approach to managing Auckland’s urban growth."

Why manage it?  Why must there be an integrated approach? Who told you this (the Ministry for the Environment Smart Growth control freaks no doubt)?  
Oh the faith... "The spatial plan will illustrate how Auckland will develop in the future. It will show where and when growth will occur in transport, housing, energy, water, recreation, education and health infrastructure and services"

Will it Nick? Will it, bollocks!  Unless you live in an authoritarian nanny state where you stifle the private sector growing anything that is not in zee plan.  How do you know Auckland will develop like that, and most of all, how do you know it is right?

Oh and he knows what Aucklanders like "Aucklanders will be looking to see that the spatial plan sets out their aspirations for their city – all those that are affordable and feasible – and which supports efficient and effective resource allocation"

No they wont, they will be looking to see how best to live their own lives peacefully, with their family and friends, minding their own business.  Most of them are not busybodies who want to tell other people where to live, how to move and what businesses they should run and where. 

Imagine Auckland without a spatial plan.  It isn't hard. 

Auckland hasn't had one up till now.  However, you voted for National or ACT to make sure there was one didn't you?

03 November 2010

The US votes for something different

The Democrats are about to get their nose bloodied, Obama will no longer be able to defer to Congress to write his legislation for him.   He wont be able to increase spending again.  He wont be able to increase taxes.   In other words, he wont be able to spend his way out of trouble.

Yet they wont get it.   

"Though it has been typically misrepresented by the liberal media as a rattlers’ nest of gun-toting fruitcakes who want to ban masturbation and abortion, it is, of course, nothing of the kind. It is – whatever the increasingly redundant Moonbat may claim – a genuine grass roots movement inspired by the one great political cause truly worth fighting and dying for: the cause of liberty. " says James Delingpole in the Daily Telegraph.

The Tea Party is a libertarian inspired movement, which has the backing of more than a few conservatives.   Yes there are some wingnuts, but the Democrats are not without their share of the same. 

Toby Harnden in the Daily Telegraph has written what he thinks will be the top 10 excuses for losing.
1.   Opponents (or enemies) don't believe in science or facts.  They are stupid.
2.   Democrats have been gutless and haven't defended their "amazing achievements" well enough.
3.   Democrats did the right thing, even though it is unpopular (oh yes, really hard decisions to spend more money they didn't have).
4.   It's history, you always lose somewhat after 2 years.  Nothing new.
5.   Democrats were too moderate, not enough change.   Not enough government.
6.   Democrats have communicated badly.  It's about marketing.
7.   Evil big business and foreign (remember these are people who name others as racist) money is feeding the enemy.  They aren't real Americans looking after real Americans.
8.   Racism.  Why else would you oppose a Black President? 
9.   The media is to blame, especially evil Fox News.   It does a lousy job.  It didn't give Obama an easy run at all did it?
10. It's Bush again.  Yes all that small government rhetoric, so common wasn't it?

Obama is desperate to increase turnout by his core of youth, Latino and Black voters, but he isn't inspiring.   Instead of preaching hope, he is preaching fear, based on at best misunderstanding, at worst lies.   Harnden says of Obama "at its core, his message is one of promoting what Margaret Thatcher called the "nanny state" at home and Wilsonian internationalism abroad.  The problem last time was that Obama DID express hope and seemed to embody something different, but what wasn't clear to many was what it meant - it didn't mean an end to pork barreling, it meant more spending, more taxes and no limits on what government was prepared to do.   This has scared people, they fear the world's biggest economy is being hamstrung by being the world's biggest debtor nation, and that free enterprise and free markets aren't important anymore.

The Tea Party is saying to hell with you all, but has managed to inspire enough Republicans to its cause.  

What will happen?  Well Congress wont be quite the same again.  It wont be a matter of Republican majorities back to their old ways, but it also wont be a Congress ready to compromise.   

Indeed, objectivist Harry Binswanger reckons that Republicans should be favoured across the board because the Tea Party has already taken over the political initiative in the party.   In other words, the Republicans will not be in a position to resist the energy and determination of the Tea Party.

It will mean gridlock, as a leftwing President faces a libertarian/conservative House, and a hung Senate.  

It has inspired much comment, as James Delingpole's article shows with over 1000 comments, many from disgruntled British Marxists who want to treat Americans as either stupid or having been duped. 
He describes elegantly the problem:

"in the last 80 or more years – and not just in the US but throughout the Western world – government has forgotten its purpose. It has now grown so arrogant and swollen as to believe its job is to shape and improve and generally interfere with our lives. And it’s not. Government’s job is to act as our humble servant."

He even mentions New Zealand as among one of the countries maintaining this philosophy:

"Wherever you go, even if it’s somewhere run by a notionally “conservative” administration, the malaise you will encounter is much the same: a system of governance predicated on the notion that the state’s function is not merely to uphold property rights, maintain equality before the law and defend borders, but perpetually to meddle with its citizens’ lives in order supposedly to make their existence more fair, more safe, more eco-friendly, more healthy. And always the result is the same: more taxation, more regulation, less freedom. Less “fairness” too, of course."

Exactly! You can see it in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in the UK, the National-ACT-Maori-Dunne coalition in NZ, and you could see it in the former Howard administration in Australia.  Meet your new boss, same as the old boss, bossing you about, just with a different bitter taste.

Government has been growing barely checked, but as he says:

"With Hitler and Stalin it was easy: the enemy was plain in view. Today’s encroaching tyranny is an of altogether more subtle, slippery variety. It takes the form of the steady “engrenage” – ratcheting – of EU legislation; of the stealthy removal of property rights and personal liberty under the UN’s Agenda 21; of the eco-legislation created by democratically unaccountable bodies like America’s Environmental Protection Agency".

The future starts tomorrow, in the USA.  For Obama will have been stopped in his tracks, and the next step is to carefully find the right Presidential candidate (it is not Palin by any stretch), and for the Tea Party to push on.   For all the next two years will mean is stasis, not progress, so the Tea Party needs to maintain momentum at the local, state and federal levels.

It angers and distresses the left, they will pull out all the stops to portray it as a war against the poor, or driven by rich who are painted like how Stalin described the Kulaks, or the left's old fashioned xenophobia will come out.   They will seek to scare minorities that it is racist or sexist, frighten the poor and the elderly, claim environmental armageddon, and want to not offend anyone (except those who disagree).   Because when you give people back their own money, take away the laws that tell them what to do, give them back their property rights, and make free choice and persuasion the tools protected by government - not regulation, tax and spending - then those who don't like people's choices and do like other people's money will get upset.

Because the future wont be about the initiation of force, but about the power of argument, of convincing individuals to act differently, to spend their money differently.  

Now that is an audacity of hope.

02 November 2010

How to kill a boondoggle

Just say no!

That's what the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, said to a US$11+ billion rail project to build a new line from New Jersey into Manhattan.  A project that was doomed to go over budget, and never make a single cent to contribute towards its capital costs.  He essentially cancelled the project because New Jersey couldn't afford it, although he would have let it proceed had the Federal Government been willing to cover any cost overruns.  There was a 90% certainty that it would have exceeded previous budget estimates of US$9.8 billion, with the highest end estimate being US$13.7 billion.

He wants to use money that had been planned for the project to fix up the state's badly maintained roads and bridges, and refused to increase fuel tax to pay for it.   However that's another story, of state managed roads that are falling apart because of mismanagement and pork barrelling from the past. 

If there was so much demand for rail travel, then fares could go up to generate net revenues to pay for it, yet fares don't pay enough to run the existing services (and yes, the roads to Manhatten from New Jersey ARE already priced, although not particularly efficiently). 

Know any other boondoggles that need someone to say no to them?

What the Green Movement Got Wrong

A documentary with this very title is to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK this Thursday.  This article in the Daily Telegraph summarises the key point of the broadcast - that environmentalists were wrong to oppose nuclear power and genetically modified crops.

American activist Stewart Brand said "Environmentalists did harm by being ignorant and ideological and unwilling to change their mind based on actual evidence. As a result we have done harm and I regret it."

None of this is news to me, since identifying the ideological rather than the evidential behind environmentalist claims is rather easy.  Jeanette Fitzsimons, the former Green MP, was a master at this, claiming 1999 was the last Christmas to enjoy potatoes "you could trust".   One of the reasons minds have been changed on GM foods for example, is because people have been eating them for over a decade, without a shred of evidence of any ill health effects.

However, beyond that documentary one of the latest scientific breakthroughs will help put paid to the myth that new roads shouldn't be built, because the "inevitable" end of cheap oil will mean private motoring will be too expensive for most people.

According to Geek.com, DBM Energy, a manufacturer of batteries for forklifts, decided to trial its rechargeable battery in a car.  An Audi A2.  The result?  A battery cheaper than existing Lithium Ion technology in cars, with a range of 375 miles (603 kms), averaging at 55 mph (89 km/h) on a charge of 6 minutes.  Now obviously there are a few steps to take before this becomes mass production, but a future of rechargeable cars might just have moved a little closer. (more on UPI)

01 November 2010

Is the US about to experience a minor revolution?

Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph thinks the mid-term elections might just mean that.

"It was widely known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more, Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central government. So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats.

The sheer simple ignorance of many to think this is simply another swing away from the Democrats to the Republicans.  It is something rather different..

 
"One of the more electorally far-reaching effects of this is that Republicanism could become the home once again of a plausible political and economic programme, rather than simply an outpost for those who seem to reject many of the features of modern life. The gun-toters and gay-bashers and pro-lifers may have jumped aboard the bandwagon, and Sarah Palin may be frantically attaching herself to the parade, but this is not their show: the Tea Party protests began (as their name suggests) as a campaign against high taxation and the illegitimate intrusiveness of federal powers. That is what they are still about"

Quite right.  It is not something to fear, it will not match either Bush era, and could be far more useful than the Reagan Administration in shrinking the state.

Obama doesn't know what to do with it.  So he is playing the game of saying it is a repeat of the Bush years on offer.  He is so wrong.  The Tea Party is not about more government, it is about less.  It isn't about trusting politicians to effect change, but about getting politicians out of the way.  The problem Obama has (and most Democrats) is that this simply does not compute - their brains don't understand that they are the problem, their politics and their solutions are not what is wanted.   That what people want is government to stop picking winners, stop supporting losers, to stop increasing the Federal debt and to pay less tax.  They actually do believe people should reap the rewards of their efforts, and bear the consequences of their losses, and that people are inherently benevolent and will look after each other without the state.

If Obama faces both the House and the Senate, controlled by individuals who believe this, then his philosophy will face complete gridlock.   The big question that will remain is who can the Republicans pick to stand for the Presidency?

28 October 2010

Charity for north Korea

Want a good charity to support the beleagured folk in North Korea?  You could do worse than "Love North Korean Children" a charity established by a British Korean man who is establishing bakeries to supply food directly to children in impoverished areas.   Not only is it feeding children who otherwise would struggle to get sufficient nutrition, but it is also giving them positive contacts with the outside world.  It is not food with state propaganda, and does not get diverted to the military or the party. 

The more of that positive foreign contact the better.

27 October 2010

The left panic over the Tea Party

Daniel Hannan once again writes brilliantly in the Daily Telegraph summarising much of the media coverage of the Tea Party in the past year or so.   It went through the phases of:
- Ignoring the Tea Party as irrelevant;
- Smearing Tea Party members as uneducated redneck country hicks (don't ever say those on the left are liberal and treat everyone as equal);
- Laughing at how the Tea Party was going to make the Republicans extremist and unelectable; and now
- Warning that Tea Party members are stupid and are being conned by a "big corporation" (successful large businesses are evil) conspiracy to take over and run their lives.

He points out at today's Guardian article by leftwing armageddonist George Monbiot (remember him? The same man who preached self immolation saying "It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves") who says the Tea Party is an exercise in "false consciousness".

Really George?  Yes, believe it or not, he believes that specific billionaires and major companies are driving the agenda, which includes "big government", and duping millions of Americans in the process.  Such stupid little people, don't know when they are being conned.  Good job there is an elite in the media and academia, as well as well intentioned and incorruptible leftwing politicians to look after their interests.
Quite why "billionaires and big business", which has been spending money on politics for a very long time is now suddenly being successful isn't clear, except that Monbiot treats the language of free markets, small government and fiscal austerity as being "the same" as what the Bush Administration and previous Republican Administrations did.   All of which is demonstrably false.

Monbiot's demon is that businesses seek to make money at the expense of their customers, employees and the places they locate.   That businesses destroy and that their wealth creation is a zero sum game, which also involves destruction and theft from others.  It is the scapegoat that Monbiot applies to the world, and so he links the corrupt and statist actions of some businesses (which continue in the form of constant pleadings for subsidies and protectionism by some), to the agenda of the Tea Party, and does so by dismissing freedom, free markets and less government as taking from the poor, and about power moving from government ("good") to companies ("bad).   

The implication goes further than that, as Hannan explains, because it embraces the idea that democracy is fundamentally flawed.  That the average person doesn't know what is good for them, and so votes against her interests because of "false consciousness".  This is where the term "Democratic People's Republic" has relevance.

The core philosophical basis for all of the Marxist-Leninist totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century (and the few that remain) is that the interests of the people are served only by a single political party that ostensibly represents their interests and acts on their behalf.  That party is an expression of the "general will", and so any who go against the party are acting not only against the interests of the "people" and "society", but themselves.  This is why many in those regimes were treated, not as political prisoners, but psychiatric patients.   It was literally considered insane to go against a party that had everyone's best interests at heart.  In an environment where truth was manufactured and controlled (because of the risk that inconvenient truths would empower those who wish to exploit and manipulate the people, and so be against their interests), it turned everything upside down.

This is what Monbiot is claiming from the Tea Party, that millions of "ordinary people" (unlike he, who knows best) are being fooled and tricked against their best interests by evil people whose only intent is not to do what they say, but to use government to enrich themselves.  

Quite what he would want to do about it, when Tea Party members themselves agree with the objectives of the Tea Party, when they want fiscal responsibility, free markets and less government, and vote accordingly, is unclear.   

Following on from that, worshippers of big government, ever increasing public debt and higher taxes have formed the "Coffee Party" as a lame attempt to raise support for their side.  One only needs to read that the Coffee Party believes "that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will" to notice that the connections between the Coffee Party's philosophy and that of Marxism are rather clear.  There is, of course, no such thing as a collective brain, and so what this really means is not that millions of people's wills are expressed through government (in fact the free market), but that a few hundred politicians vote for the policies they espouse and bind everyone else in the process.   If a majority want to take more money from a minority, or give more of someone else's money to a minority, or regulate a minority, then they can.  Without constitutional limits on this to protect fundamental individual rights, the risks are clear that government can become a tyranny of the majority.   

Clearly those who embrace tax and bigger government are panicking.  Panicking that their self-deluded belief that things can only get better if only they could spend other people's money where it would "do good", prohibit things that are "bad" and promote things that are "good", is no longer being supported.  Panicking that a lot of Americans are seeing the Federal deficit and debt and asking the reasonable question "when does this have to be paid, who pays it".

Panicking that Americans don't want corporate bailouts, don't want politicians using the government to pay minority interests other people's money, and that they actually truly do believe that the free market offers the best opportunities for economic growth, prosperity and the right to live one's life as one sees fit.

Why does the left peddle such vacuous hatred?


He asks why he finds that "high-minded causes attract adherents who are looking for a way to validate their sociopathic tendencies, to feel good about the fact that they dislike so many of their fellow human beings. "

He cites the language used in various articles by some from the left " this one by the Labour MP Tristram Hunt, in which he claims that the Conservatives want to return to Victorian workhouses; this one, in which Polly Toynbee talks about the Tories’ “final solution for the poor”; this one, in which Labour’s John Cruddas talks about a million people being driven from their homes “as a result of the Coalition’s savage attack on the poor”.

Do those on the left really believe their vacuous rhetoric that those who are not on the left hate the poor, want them to suffer and (in the case of Toynbee's vile but carefully chosen words) want them exterminated?
As much as I oppose the welfare state it is not motivated by hatred or disinterest in those who are worse off than myself.   Even the trimming of the welfare state being implemented in the UK (largely about those who are on higher incomes claiming benefits and those claiming more than the average wage in total benefits) are seen as being a "savage attack" on the poor.

The left does not have a monopoly on compassion, indeed the speed and voracity at which it turns on those who dare to disagree with its solutions shows how shallow that "compassion" actually is.  How many on the left talk of dancing on Margaret Thatcher's grave, how many on the right talk the same about Tony Benn, George Galloway or Arthur Scargill?

The assumption of evil intent on the behalf of those not part of the left, and those who do not share the "correct line" is malignant and destructive.  It is used by media with a leftwing tendency such as the BBC to create a basic binary debate that puts the leftwing statist solutions against those who simply water those solutions down, rather than those who say the statist solutions are morally and practically wrong.  However, most of all it is a tool to provoke vapid emotional responses, particularly to spread fear among the less educated.   

Far easier to tell those on low incomes how much the government is hurting them, how much they are ignored, neglected and going to be harmed by a heartless government, than to engage on how the budget deficit should be cut.   Leftist tacticians know very well that playing to emotions, simple slogans about the right being "for the rich" and about "enriching their rich mates" provoke an instant response of hatred and disdain.   They also know that they can dismiss and ignore talk about real economic issues (which most people know little about) by using the language of "caring".

It's simply sad that far too many let them get away with this.   The simple question any journalist could ask leftwing activists who seek more government spending is "why don't you spend more of your own money or raise your own money from donations?".   This question exposes the point that the interest is not in outcomes, but means. 

UPDATE 1:  Deputy PM Nick Clegg has taken the vile Labour MP Chris Bryant on for saying that the new housing policy means the poor are "socially engineered and sociologically cleansed out of London". Shades of Bosnia when the Serb nationalist thugs rounded up Bosnian Muslim men and boys, took them out of towns and executed them.   Clegg pointed out that the new policy is about no longer subsidising people with housing benefit to live in areas where employed people on average incomes couldn't afford to live.   Again, leftwing politicians use the language of genocide (not unlike the use of the term "climate deniers") to criticise those who they disagree with.

What is the motive of Julian Assange?

Not too long ago the words "Wikileaks" and the name "Julian Assange" were not that widely known.  Wikileaks was a curious website, where unofficial information would be posted, and governments would be upset about what was posted.   However, the publicity generated in the past week has dwarfed all of that.

What has apparently been revealed is allied forces complicity in ignoring acts of torture by Iraqi government forces.   The implication being that the US Administration is uninterested in the fate of Iraqi civilians.  Now in and of itself it is disconcerting.  If you genuinely wish Iraq to become a country that is a bastion of liberal open civil society and secular transparent accountable (and small) government it is unacceptable to tolerate an Iraqi government that acts with impunity against suspected insurgents.  It is reasonable, always, for questions to be asked of governments engaged in military action when that action includes wilful blindness and tolerance of grievous acts of abuse.  

Yet does Julian Assange actually want Iraq to become a liberal open civil society with a secular transparent accountable liberal democratic government?  Who knows.  What is fairly clear is that his actions are designed primarily not to expose shameful acts by the Iraqi authorities, but rather to damn the entire allied military presence in Iraq.  The simple view of the Iraqi conflict, as spread by the leftwing peace movement (as distinguished by those who questioned the wisdom of the intervention rather than the motives) goes like this:
-  Bush wanted to overthrow the Iraqi regime (probably true);
-  It was all about oil (not true, but having a friendly regime in charge of Iraqi oil was helpful);
- A threat was fabricated  regarding weapons of mass destruction (false) and terrorism (exaggerated yes, but not empty);
- The US and it allies invaded Iraq with no concern for civilian casualties or the fate of the Iraqi people (false); and last but far from least..
- The US and its allies are responsible for the deaths and killings since the overthrow of the Saddam regime.

Christopher Hitchens in Slate writes about the imbalance in the reporting on Iraq.  You see the "anti-war" left want to portray all killing as being consequential of the invasion.  No consideration of how many Saddam's regime of thugs would have killed (but you can ignore that because the US did in the 80s, so Saddam deserved protection from ever being overthrown by the US because of that). 

He said "The continuing bloodbath is chiefly the result of an obscene alliance between the goons of the previous dictatorship and the goons of a would-be-future theocratic one. From the very first day after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, without ever issuing so much as a manifesto or a bill of grievances, this criminal gang awarded itself permission to use high explosives, assassination, torture, and rape against a population that was given no moment of breathing space after three decades of war and fascism."

Yet, those who opposed the US invasion in the West treated those who sought the Islamification of Iraq as heroes.  Ignoring there suicide bombings, random executions and Taliban like suppression of speech (including music) in areas they would control.

He continues "Not long ago, I read an interview with Julian Assange in which he declared his ostensibly journalistic objective to be that of "ending" the war. Most edifying. The easiest way of ending it would be for one side to cease fighting it. (That almost happened in Iraq before the surge, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida claimed control of a province or two.) I have an intuition that I know which side Assange wishes would capitulate."

Quite.

You see it is one thing to rightfully want to ensure that the Iraqi government acts with respect for individual rights and freedoms.   It is another to be willfully blind towards the chief cause of the violence and killings in Iraq, and to be less than interested in the defeat of those who see the overthrow of Saddam an opportunity to create a brutal Islamist theocracy.

So yes, damn those allied soldiers who have acted with impunity, damn those in the Iraqi government who also do so.   However, if one's primary concern is the people of Iraq, is it not equally appropriate to be damning the Iranian backed insurgents who wish to convert Iraq back into a brutal totalitarian tyranny, but with a new (and imperialist) master?  

26 October 2010

How can we cycle without a quango?

One of the numerous QUANGOs to be abolished by the Con-Dem government as part of its programme to cut government spending to the levels of around 4 years ago is "Cycling England".  This entity had a budget of £5 million in 2005 which has now ballooned elephant like to £60 million this year ("oh but the deficit is due to bankers" cry the wilfully blind on the left).   Quite why it needed a 1200% budget increase at a time of deficits is astonishing, and even with its abolition this funding wont disappear.

What is the response of the Green Party of England and Wales?  Hysteria

"A big question mark now hangs over the future of cycling" says Green Party representative Ian Davey (a city councillor in Brighton, not an MP).

Really Ian?  Does cycling need a government agency spending vast amounts of other people's money?  Do people not buy bicycles unless bureaucrats are paid to promote it?  Will people stop biking because Cycling England no longer exists?

What sort of hysterical hyperbole is this?  The type that states that if anything good exists, it can't survive without the government spending other people's money on it.

Now I am not saying that cycling isn't good, in fact the measure about whether it is good is up to the individual.   Some find it a lot of fun, it keeps them fit etc.  Others are uninterested.  That's ok. 
However there IS a solution for those who promote cycling.   They can keep Cycling England or reconstitute it through (take a deep breath, the concept I am about to describe bamboozles statists) their own efforts and their own money.

Yes, remarkable though it may be to those on the left, but you don't need the government to make things happen in your community.

I'll try it another way - "take the energy you put into placards, marching and generally being a nuisance to peaceful citizens going about their business, and use it to help do what you like Cycling England doing".

You see the government doesn't get enough money, from already high taxes, to pay for everything you want.  Which means you're going to have to pay for some things you like yourself.  

Oh and if you don't, cycling isn't going to end.  For the same reason that there isn't an organisation called Blogging England to help fund this activity.

22 October 2010

French strikes a triumph of emotion over reason

The ongoing strikes in France, led by left wing unions and student groups, are opposing the raising of the minimum retirement age in France from 60 to 62.  If you read Idiot Savant you'd think the Sarkozy administration plans are about funding tax cuts for the rich.  If you take off your economically illiterate red coloured glasses you'd learn that it is actually about starting to confront the economic reality that the French Government cannot perpetually run budget deficits, like it has for several decades.  

If nothing was to be done, by 2050 two working age French people would be paying the retirement income of one.  With public debt set to hit 337% of GDP by then (it is 80% now), France will make Greece look like a mild defaulter.  
Of course in the world of the "see no fiscal reality" left, you simply put up taxes.  The legions of young people protesting in favour of protecting pensions shows the ignorance that can so easily be spread, few realising that they will have to pay far more taxes than those who are currently at retirement age, to pay for those who will retire when THEY are in their 50s.   

The reason why this is happening is the ponzi scheme madness of government funded pay as you go (PAYGO) pensions.  The same crisis would exist in the UK, if the retirement age was not to be increased.  In New Zealand the same crisis will occur as well, only partly covered by Dr. Cullen's socialised "fund" designed to invest tax revenue for retirement rather than just operate a PAYGO system.  The United States has this crisis writ large as well.  

The only way these schemes can be sustained is by reducing what is paid, increasing the eligibility age and increasing the tax contributions of those who might not get anything out of it.   A better way would be to simply freeze schemes at their current nominal level so that the total amount paid out erodes over time, but it also enables tax cuts to be implemented over time as well.   If people invest their own money in retirement income rather than the state spending it (or "investing" it), there is a greater pool of savings, more capital for private sector growth and a sustainable basis for retirement income.  

However in France, socialism is ingrained in "being French" say some.  It is an attitude that also infects the European Union, but one that cannot deft reality forever.   People in France might observe that GDP per capita in real terms for that country is now drifting towards that of Greece and Spain, not the UK and Germany.   I suspect the French appetite to do anything substantive to stop that relative decline remains low.

21 October 2010

Where did the Liberal part go?

In the midst of the announcements of slender cuts to public spending in the UK, came the news that the government is to proceed with Labour's plan for data on every phone call, website visit, text message and email in the UK to be stored for one year.   Unlike Labour, which wanted the government collecting it on its own database, the Con-Dem coalition will impose the obligation on internet service providers and telecommunications providers.  The emails and text message details wont include the content, but it is still a big brother state seeking to have the capacity to engage in surveillance of anyone it wishes.   It is one thing to get a warrant to monitor the communications of a suspect, another to make private providers keep such records.  After all, what does a website visit tell anyone other than what someone may be curious about (does visiting an Islamist website make someone a sympathiser?).

The Liberal Democrats claimed that they would bring a commitment to individual freedom and a belief in a smaller state to this coalition.   It would appear that this has been stomped on by the jackboot of the Home Office and the obsessive paranoia of the law enforcement sector which always errs on the side of less freedom.

British government cuts modest and unimpressive

Finally it's out.  The Report of the comprehensive Spending Review was released by Chancellor George Osborne, and the result?  Well it's a bit mixed.

The real effect is to cut government spending to levels seen in 2007.  Hardly radical.

The cuts are spread over the next five years and are a £83 billion reduction compared to the Gordon Brown budget.  What does that mean?  Well it is actually only a £28 billion reduction in real terms (taking into account inflation).  From a total budget of £697 billion, it is a reduction of only 4%!  In nominal terms it is a £41 billion increase in spending.  In effect the increase in nominal spending has been cut by two-third.   Brutal cut?  I think not.

So the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the statists of the left is unjustified.   In this period, spending on interest on debt (in other words the price of the past decade of overspending by Gordon Brown) climbs 46% (nominally) to £63 billion per annum by 2015.   9% of all government spending in 2015 being just the interest on servicing debt.  That's more than the total education budget (but deficit spending is caring didn't you know?).

The welfare state isn't being decimated either.  The estimate is that total spending will be increasing in nominal terms from £194 billion today to £214 billion by 2015.  That's over £3,500 for every adult and child in the UK! 

The lie is that it is about hitting the poor.  It is actually mostly about hitting civil service bureaucracy, with 500,000 "jobs" being scrapped over 5 years.

So what is good?

- The appalling "Department of Business, Innovation and Skills" gets a 30% cut in real terms over 5 years, primarily by ending its funding for universities (universities being free to set fees from students to make up the difference).  It also loses £400 million in administration.  Its government science funding is frozen.   Government university funding is not solely from this source, but this is a wholesale shift from predominantly state funding to predominantly student funding.   This is a worthwhile step.

What is tolerable?

- Welfare spending only gets a slowing of growth.  A single benefit is to be created, means tested, staggered to encourage work over welfare and to be cut for those with savings over £16,000.   Already announced cuts to abolish child benefits for those on the top 15% of incomes, and capping total welfare anyone can claim to the average wage.  The pension age drips up to 66 by 2020, hardly radical.  Yet child benefit will still be spent on children until age 19.  Increases in winter fuel allowances will be made permanent and remain for people on all incomes.  Free bus passes and TV licences for the elderly remain.  Pension increases will be linked to the highest of inflation, wages or 2.5%!  In short, welfare is being tinkered with, but the welfare state remains big and strong.  

- The Department for Communities and Local Government gets a 7% cut in real terms over 5 years.  The big saving is in council housing.  New council housing tenants will face rents of up to 80% of market levels, but existing council housing tenants face no change in rental conditions.   It will stem demand for council housing, but is intended to subsidise construction of 150,000 more state owned homes over four years.  So the role in housing isn't being cut back much  Council tax is frozen for a year, because the state will be subsidising it! Funding for "social care" (essentially care homes and support for the elderly) gets a £1 billion increase over 4 years.  Not much excitement here.

- The Department of Education and Skills gets a 11% cut in real terms over 5 years.   This involves a one-third cut in administration, 60% cut in capital budget and abolition of quangos.  The £30 a week bribe to teenagers to stay at college after 16 is being scrapped in favour of targeted bribes.  However a "pupil premium" will be increased to subsidise poor children to go to better schools.  Teaching salaries and expenditure wont be seriously affected.  Education largely holds its own outside the tertiary sector.

- The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gets a £700 million cut over 5 years, from a one third cut in administration, two thirds of its quangos are to be abolished, with cuts in funding for nature reserves, flood defences and biosecurity (all of which will have to fund themselves more).  

- The Home Office gets a 27% cut in real terms over 5 years.  This means a 20% cut in funding of local police forces from central government (although the locally funded share means the effect is less dramatic).  The UK Border Agency gets a 20% cut in real terms (which either means more efficiency, longer queues at Heathrow or less control of illegal immigrants or all of the above!).  Home Office civil servants spending are cut by one third.   The capital budget is cut by 49%.  Why tolerable?  Because it continues to fail to confront real crime to tackle the social disaster of parts of the country that are controlled by yobs.   The Home Office is a bloated centre of ever increasing control

What is disappointing?

- The Ministry of Defence faces a 5% cut in real terms in five years, but its story is deserving of the cliche "travesty".   Reconnaissance aircraft (Nimrods) will not be replaced, the Harrier and Tornado fleets will be scrapped early.  All three forces will lose soldiers, sailors and aircrew, but more welcome is the cut in 25,000 civilian personnel.  Tanks, ships and artillery are being scrapped.  The Ark Royal aircraft carrier is scrapped, and one of the two new aircraft carriers (being built which are more expensive to cancel than build) will be mothballed within three years.   Aircraft carriers wont have any British aircraft to operate on them after the Harriers are scrapped, until 2020 if the Joint Strike Fighters proceed.  The replacement for the Trident submarine based nuclear deterrent is deferred until after the next election.  The short of it is that the UK could not repeat the Falklands conflict if it needed to, and could not match the commitment it had originally for Iraq or Afghanistan.   The UK is stepping back from its ability to project military power.   What is particularly frustrating is to have unfunded aircraft carriers ordered without aircraft able to use them.  The MoD screwed up, the Brown government didn't spot it, and so one reaps the rewards of a state focused not on its core, but on too many issues at once.

- The Department of Energy and Climate Change (which frankly could be closed) will have a 5% per annum cut over 5 years.  Why disappointing?  Well it includes a "Green Investment Bank" worth £1 billion to fund gold-plated energy projects like offshore wind farms, £1 billion to fund carbon capture and storage, £200 million to fund low carbon electricity.  The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority gets an increase in budget, to support the policy of allowing new nuclear power plants.  People will get subsidies for generating their own electricity in environmentally friendly ways.  Grants for insulating homes get cut 63%.  

- Health was always not to be really affected.  Given estimates of inflation, it will face a 1% cut in real terms, but the NHS itself gets a 0.5% real increase.  As it had a 50% increase in funding in real terms over the period of the last government, this is hardly going to hurt.   More is to be spent on social care, cancer drugs, three new hospitals are to be built.  Administration is to be cut by a third, with eight health quangos abolished.  10 health authorities and 150 primary care trusts are to be abolished. With £109.4 billion spending this year, this is an area where scope for efficiencies would be enormous, and to ration demand for a system that is "free at the point of use" (generating waste from appointments not kept and the worried well).  One curiosity is abolition of a £75 million programme to promote healthy eating and drinking.   The world's biggest health bureaucracy continues.

- The Department for International Development means foreign aid. It is being increased by 43% in nominal terms over five years.  Administration cost are to be cut by 50% and foreign aid to Russia and China terminated, but this increase helps fund bilateral aid, the UN, the EU and other multilateral agencies.   By 2013 0.7% of the UK's GNP will be spent on state foreign aid, a UN target.  A transfer from the middle class of the UK to the upper classes of the third world.  

- Ministry of Justice is cut by 26% in real terms over 5 years.  Why disappointing? Because it effectively means cutting spending on prisons without a commensurate abolition of victimless crimes.  Less prison places, court closures and reductions in legal aid.  Without a comprehensive strategy to focus law and order on real crime, there is every risk that this results in the public being less safe.  Again, a core role of the state being distracted by everything else.  The potential is there for this to be positive, but there is little sign of this.

- Department for Transport is cut by 13%, but spending on grand rail projects like Crossrail remains, and the road budget is being used for some high value projects (but still remains hopefully inadequate compared to the revenue collected from road users).  Rail remains addicted to the state tit, and there are few signs of moving roads to the private sector.  

So let's not get excited.   Government spending is being sent in the right direction, but not by much.  The welfare state, health and education largely get unaffected (with university spending being hit the most), everything else is more about tweaking spending and cutting much bureaucracy.  On the downside, the core roles of defence, police and justice are hit significantly, but it is unclear whether this has long run effects on Britain's military capability and whether law and order will be seriously affected.

So no, it isn't the catastrophe the state addicted left will claim, and it is hardly enough to get a libertarian excited.  Keep calm and carry on.

20 October 2010

What can undo the Tea Party in the US?

When the positive push for less government gets tainted and polluted by idiots like this.

Let's be clear, the Tea Party movement has core values and principles that are undoubtedly libertarian and pro-freedom.  In and of itself it promotes small government, free markets and fiscal responsibility.    The fact that some Republicans have actually taken it upon themselves to embrace what are the core values and principles of the United States of America is positive.   It is frightening the silver spoon socialists like Nancy Pelosi, who hasn't seen a problem she didn't want the government to fix.

It has perplexed President Obama who is astonished that only two years after he won off the back of a euphoria of incredibly vacuousness ("change" I'll give you "change") he isn't getting "credit" for introducing compulsory health insurance, bailing out failed banks and automotive manufacturers and spending billions of dollars that are not being raised in taxes.

The Democrats are lost between being amazed that so many Americans are embracing the small government message, disappointed that Barack Obama has not parted the sea, healed the sick, rebuilt the economy and "changed" everything for the better, so have resorted to accusing the Tea Party Movement of racism (the cheap instant slur thrown about with such abandon that it demeans those who fought true racism).

So it is an opportunity, yet it is one that is so readily squandered in the hands of Christian conservatives who seek to use the state to promote or enforce their own beliefs.

There is no majority in the United States of Christians who want the Federal Government to promote religion in schools, to regulate behaviour between consenting adults or restrict freedom of speech.   Indeed those like O'Connell who dare to question whether the United States is a secular liberal democracy will do far more damage to the Tea Party Movement than anything else.

For the "wingnut" religious right in the US will vote Republican in any case, but by associating the Tea Party Movement with religion it alienates swinging voters who find religious fundamentalism distasteful, but who agree with small government, free markets and fiscal responsibility.

Yes some imbecilic parents want their children to be taught that the pseudo-science of creationism is "as valid" scientifically as evolution.  The appropriate answer to that is to privatise education, so that schools can set themselves up as they wish and teach as they wish, so the state is not involved.   The answer is not to confuse beliefs in the supernatural with the state.

It is why the likes of Sarah Palin can not be the Presidential candidate for the Republicans in 2012.  She does not consistently believe in small government (she believes in the war on drugs for starters,and she has lobbied for earmarked pork funding from the Federal Government for Alaska) and she cannot help but get tied up in linking religion to public policy (by claiming war in Iraq was part of "god's plan").  

The Tea Party can be a great force for good, but it will be undone only by two types of people, the religious right who want it to be a proxy for an agenda that is anything BUT about reducing the size the government, (and so frightening off moderate Christians, and non-Christians to the Democrats or not voting at all) and (more likely) the sleazy, pork barrel carrying, power hungry statists who have dominated the Republican Party for decades.

Sarah Palin is in both camps, she finds it difficult to separate her religion from her publicly expressed political views and has also shown herself to be part of the establishment (as well as being far from bright).

I am wishing the Tea Party the very best in the mid-terms, if only because it will send a message to the Republican Party, and because the Democrats will have no way of confronting it other than attack (how can they embrace a movement that runs contrary to all they say and do).  However, it cannot and should not be a hostage to imbecility or those for whom the phrase "Christian theocracy" doesn't send chills down their spines.

Spending cuts do not take money out of the economy

It's so abundantly simple that it shouldn't need explaining, but the Adam Smith Institute hasn't done a bad job:

"The error is in seeing the government as being external to the economy, with spending coming as manna from heaven. In fact, government money does not come from nowhere – barring simply printing money to pay for spending (which obviously does not increase actual wealth), government spending money can either come from taxes or borrowing."

Anyone can see that taking it from taxes is a transfer from the private sector to the state, and simple redistribution.  If this generated wealth, then North Korea would be beating South Korea.

How about borrowing though? Surely that's bringing money in?

"Government borrowing comes from private savings, crowding out private borrowers like entrepreneurs and investors. By diverting money away from businesses and entrepreneurs, who can use it to create commercially-valuable projects, wealth is squandered on projects that are unproductive such that only a government. If they were productive, why would it be necessary to tax people to pay for them in the first place?"
 
Now some make the argument that governments can make productive investment, in certain infrastructure where the private sector is prohibited or crowded out.  This can be true if the projects selected are high value, but this is only a second best option and only reflects the failure to allow market signals to incentivise the private sector to enter such markets (the best example is with roads).   

Yet neither in the UK, nor in the US (nor New Zealand) is such deficit spending about roads, it is about consumption.

This is why eliminating deficit spending is positive for economies.   It gets the government out of competing with private businesses for borrowing (of all sizes), so it reduces the cost of borrowing.  As government debt is typically seen as one of the safest "investments" (nothing like lending to someone who can extract repayment by force from its subjects), reducing the supply of such debt will induce financial institutions to look elsewhere for returns.

After all, Japan has been deficit spending now for over a decade, and the results have remained lacklustre. 

19 October 2010

Keep calm, the cuts are going to be pitiful


The full details will be announced in two days time, but we already know how much the total value will be as the Emergency Budget foreshadowed the amount earlier this year.

The Adam Smith Institute has analysed what was forecast, although it has forecast inflation being 2-3% (when it is closer to 5%) and the overall cuts will be only 4.2% over five years.

Even the Guardian's handy public spending guide demonstrates that after the forecast cuts, the size of the British state as a proportion of GDP will be about the same as when the Atlee Labour Government lost power (after creating the NHS). It will not be the lowest since WW2, which was shared by the mid 1950s under Eden and the late 90s under Blair (the first term of which was characterised by fiscal restraint). 

So let's not get excited.  Schools wont close down, hospitals wont close, nobody is going to starve, the only people who will get less welfare are those on middle to higher incomes and precious little of the state sector is getting cut back.    

The only reason noise is being made is because so many have been enjoying the growth of the state tit in the past decade that they find it hard to accept that the money to keep this up simply does not exist.

Labour's land policy can be extended

Labour Leader Phil Goff today announced that given the warm reception of his policy against foreign own land and businesses that he would apply the principle more generally.

Given that foreign investors can often have a pernicious, non-Kiwi way of looking at land and infrastructure operations, we understand that only the Tangata Whenua, meaning not only Maori but non-Maori Kiwi blokes and blokesses know how to treat land as more than an investment, but a link to the nation and the people. This link isn’t just across Aotearoa but is local too, so I have decided to announce that Labour will restrict sales of South Island land to South Islanders only.

For many years now more and more farms, businesses and infrastructure in the South Island has been owned predominantly or exclusively by North Island companies and individuals. These people do not have a direct link with the land, and are less likely to appreciate the cultural, economic, social and environmental sensitivities involved. The Queen Street Farmer with properties in Otago must come to an end.

The inflation in prices that this allows has been rampant, so I will institute a policy that such sales will only be allowed if they are in the interests of South Islanders.

Given the wisdom of this approach, I intend to empower local authorities to institute similar such rules, so that the people of Hamilton do not face Aucklanders buying up properties and shutting them out of the market. Similarly, the overpriced Kapiti housing market will be set free by keeping Wellingtonians out
.”

He continued:

“There are big North Island buyers with money to burn who want to control and own the supply chain for food production. Instead of adding value to production in the South Island, they could decide to do it in the North Island.

That would cost the South Island jobs.

They’re going from the North to the South Island to buy what’s currently South Islanders’ and they will be doing it more often.

South Islanders are more vulnerable as land values fall.

We are at risk of our land being priced on a national market beyond the reach of South Islanders.

When South Islanders have to compete against North Island buyers, we have to ask ourselves - what will happen if the prices paid lock us out of owning our own land?
Where does it end up if we say to ambitious young South Islanders that you can only buy into our best and productive assets if you come from the North Island or you are born into a wealthy family.

That is not the South Island I want.

No North Islander has the right to buy South Island land - it is a privilege.
It is a privilege we have granted too easily.

Today you have my commitment that Labour will turn the rules on selling land to across Cook Strait on their head.

We’ll guarantee that South Islanders’ interests are put first.

We will reverse the presumption that any North Island purchase of South Island rural land is good for South Islanders.”

He continued to explain that he would be consulting on whether to first restrict inter-electorate sales of land ("can't have those Cantabrians buying West Coast land willy nilly can we?") or inter local authority sales ("Carterton for Cartertonians"!), noting that local authorities themselves may decide to impose more local restrictions if need be.

"Parnell for Parnellians, Miramar for Miramaranians, Taradale for Taradalians" he could be heard banally crying out.

He noted finally that this policy was in alignment with the great philosophy of self-reliance of Juche, adopted from Pyongyang.