Hmm. Looks like the French are at it again.
A shame really, that a nation with a culture like France should fall into relapses of this violence every few years. I suppose, that's the price you pay for the society of moochers which has always been the end product of socialism.
Unfortunately, this has always gone hand-in-hand with the idea of "liberty". The combination of the two has never been pretty -case in point: the French Revolution.
(Hat tip Not PC and Shane Pleasance for links)
Now that the TARP (Toxic Assets Relief Programme) in the US has cost over $27 trillion (according to the inspector-general for the programme), now seems a good time to post some videos on the subject -they often explain more than many essays.
Here's what 1 trillion (let alone 27 trillion) can buy (sorry for the size):
Here's how the thing started in the first place (although it probably doesn't stress the governmental role as much as it should:
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
Much to the annoyance of the many conservative bloggers on the Kiwi blogosphere, most libertarian commentators on the internet on this side of the ditch have been out in full force protesting the Drug War. Of course, it makes sense given how the murder of a policeman, shooting of three other people, and 50-hour siege in Napier started, after all, in a "routine drug bust". But one can rant forever on the drug war -it's much deeper than just who's selling what to whom.
Now, in true benefit-of-the-doubt fashion (something akin to "Who is John Galt?"), most people will shrug it off as an isolated incident; after all, this guy did try to shoot 21 people, and opened fire at a friend's house four years ago. The more politically motivated will talk about gun control -we already hear reports about the number of unlicensed guns in New Zealand, and guns being sold freely over the internet. But no one will address the truly pressing concern in New Zealand, and indeed all of Western Society, that led to this siege: the culture of fear -and the accompanying culture of hopelessness- that has penetrated New Zealand society, and how it all leads to tragedies like this. This fear isn't about foreign wars and natural disasters; this is fear of friends, fear of neighbours, fear of government.
The culture of fear has always been present in dictatorships, the Soviet Union being the greatest example. If a neighbour didn't like you, he could simply denounce you -you would be dead soon. If you were caught saying something totally insignificant that the Party didn't like, you would meet a similar fate, and you always had to watch your back.
However, it has always been a rarity throughout the fundamentally optimistic Western World, and New Zealand has never, until recently, had any symptoms of a culture of fear. Similarly, a culture of fear has developed in the United States -observe that a recent cop shooting was over a fear that Obama was going to take away people's guns- Britain and France (riots, and all). To trace the development of the culture of fear seeping through Western society, we need to look at recent political developments.
Let's take Britain, as an example. At the end of WWII and into the 50s and 60s, Britain was hailed as a model society -a society in which you knew your neighbours and would always be happy to help. Its crime rates were some of the world's lowest. At the end of WWII, Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore went to Britain to find out how they managed to create such a polite society, to try to recreate that culture in Singapore. Nowadays the opposite is true: Britain's crime rates are some of the highest in the Western World, and broken families abound.
In the United States, much the same occurred. In the words of Walter Williams:
"During the 1940s and '50s, I grew up in North Philadelphia where many of today's murders occur. It was a time when blacks were much poorer, there was far more racial discrimination, and fewer employment opportunities and other opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility were available. There was nowhere near the level of crime and wanton destruction that exists today. Behavior accepted today wasn't accepted then by either black adults or policemen." Indeed, according to a recent documentary,* among the victims of many violent crimes, they will not tell who is was that shot, stabbed or assaulted them!
The same is now occurring in New Zealand. With the exponential growth in government powers in all three countries, a culture of fear is taking flight. So what happened in these last fifty years?
___
In philosophy, we saw a much greater emphasis being placed on the "common good"* through the rise of political correctness, and a move away from an objective, independent reality to the primacy of consciousness -observe how art devolved from being based on human interpretations of an objective, proper reality (romanticism through to art deco), to negating such an idea, putting all emphasis on "feeling" (expressionism through to post-modernism). By therefore negating man's existence into inexplicable feelings, modern philosophy helped to destroy the idea of self esteem, and a moral existence.
This had profound implications on society. What would be the result if human actions were based, not out of value seeking rational individuals basing their actions on production, but out of people who believed that no such thing as a rational individual could exist, and that freedom meant freedom from reality, to be administered, by force, from the producers of the world? The idea of a human became one who survives only by short term actions against one another.
Indeed, modern liberalism bases its ideas on the principle that, as men have to be rational producers to survive, no such thing as total liberty (from force and fraud) exists, and that producers have a duty to feed the non-productive.
The outcome has been, and continues to be, the breakdown of human relations. Men can only live in harmony when they deal with each other as rational beings, through the paradigm of values. At this point, liberals will talk about how the welfare state** and "working together" is the antidote to the culture of fear; conservatives will discuss religion and community. Both will say that selfishness is the cause of the culture of fear, propose collectivist solutions, and call for the heads of the productive to roll.
___
Political developments have reflected this trend in attitude. In centuries past, it would have been completely unthinkable that government should have as much control over private affairs, citizen's money and business that it does today. According to the US Libertarian Party, in 1950 the total money collected by all forms of government was 2% of total income. Nowadays, it is often an entire year's salary for a working family. There are over four million security cameras in Britain (all of which seem hopeless in preventing Islamist attacks, somehow).
When a government subscribes to the culture of fear, it does not trust its citizens with their lives or money. People must be controlled.
These developments in turn isolate the citizenry from those assigned to protect their rights -that's where Jan Molenaar, the man behind the Napier siege, comes in. A culture of hopelessness, increases in crime, and a dramatic decrease in living standards, has always been the result of a culture of fear - often followed by dictatorship, either of the proletariat, the Aryan Race, or some form of supreme leader.
And that, I fear, is where we're heading.
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Notes:
*Many people say that there was actually less emphasis on the individual in the old British Empire than now. However, times of war aside, subjects of the Empire were very astute as to their individual rights which were considered sacrosanct -in effect, going to War, as an example, was to safeguard these rights -not for some purely collectivist reason such as an arbitrary idea of "Britain is good". For a further discussion of this idea, refer to Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It".
**Many leftists claim that the reforms of the 1980s and 9os are the cause of the culture of fear. However, economic reforms come and are now going, and the culture of fear can be traced far back before the 1980s. Institutions and cultures are two different things, and capitalism works with a culture of entrepreneurship to accompany it -not a culture of fear.
References:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4770
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5012
http://www.lp.org/issues/family-budget
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm“Killadelphia”; Narrator: Louis Theroux
The Economist
A further discussion of the ideas of art discussed here and their philosophical meaning can be found on Not PC, or other Objectivist websites and blogs.
The riots in London over the G20 meeting have left one protester dead. Frankly, this doesn't surprise me.
The further left you go on the political spectrum, the more violent protests usually are; and in a protest as vehemently anti-capitalist as this one, events were bound to turn violent. Violent protests, far from being a form of free-speech, are in most cases just a lot of angry teenagers and twenty-somethings who:
- have never run a business, let alone the huge businesses they've been protesting against;
-have never had responsibility for their lives assumed by other people. Most protesters are not working-class people with a genuine interest in living independently -they're usually middle class.
-turn not to principles on reality, but the arbitrary to justify their assertions ("everything's relative", "you can't prove reason's relationship with reality", "one man's freedom is another man's chains" etc)
-think their ideas are "rebelling against the system". They think they're "cool" for the lack thereof.
If the protesters are really interested in the plight of the poor, they'll engage in the most noble and greatest of all human actions: the act of production- of which their reckless violence is the opposite.
As expected Obama and Pelosi's 1000 page stimulus package has passed both the US House of Representatives and the Senate, to be signed into law by Obama ASAP.
Let's go over some aspects of it: the bill is some +700 billions dollars of spending in various areas. First off, where will this money come from? They can take it directly from taxes -which the populace will notice directly, and not be happy about. Better to print money instead, and only notice it over a long period of time -when over stimulus can be passed. Glenn Beck shows the increase in the US money supply:
Secondly, what will the money be spent on? Rebuilding American infrastructure, economically, sounds like a good idea. But what's the point of building infrastructure if no one's going to use it? Infrastructure is built to facilitate economic growth now, when it is cost-effective. The sorry state of US infrastructure now is the result of over-enthusiastic government infrastructure building in the 50s and 60s, which couldn't all be maintained at once. Government planning in those days also centred around the suburbs, leading to unnecessary infrastructure projects.
Thirdly, is it moral to take money from those who still have it to use for projects that won't be used? To distort market signals leading to another collapse? Is it wise to take money from the producers who, like Atlas, hold up the American -and World- economy and give it to people whose only business is consuming without producing?
The answer to all these questions is a resounding: NO!
Obama's new US$825b stimulus package passed through the House of Representatives today. Not good news.
He obviously hasn't learnt anything from the Bush US$700b (and now uncounable trillions) bailout, then!
The hype around Barack Obama reached new highs yesterday during the inauguration, when hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Washington to see their new President. Now, after the glamourous celebrations, reality is going to start to bite.
During his campaign, instead of outlining policies backed by evidence to tackle the current economic crisis, Barack Obama raved on about "change we can believe in", that we need to get through it "together", etc. Instead of appealling to reason, he simply used a good speaking voice to great effect, appealling to emotion.
Unfortunately for him, he's now the person people look to for leadership and guidance, and expectations are incredibly high. What happens when a man with no clue of how to lead, no rational policies and principles based on "feeling", has his finger on the button?
He cashed on the failure of Bush to extremes -he made himself look like a new hope, a new way forward by simply using the word "change". What he's been advocating is more government regulation, based on collectivism. Bush was one of the biggest spenders in US history, so where's the "change" in advocating big government?
Then of course, there's the race issue. Leftists intellectuals have been raving on about how Obama's election victory is proof of "post-racial America". They're forgeting something -a "post-racial America" would not care about race!
Barack Obama won the Presidency through appeals to emotion, not reason. Given expectations, I expect the next four years to be... hilarious, if not outright scary.
As of today, the school year has ended for High Schools and Colleges all over the country, with Primaries and Intermediates finishing now or next week. Some kids will be out around the towns and cities, but most of them will be at home.
Just today, an article appeared in the Dominion Post warning that New Zealand's "She'll be right" attitude (what attitude? it died out years ago when, mysteriously, crime was on the rise) is to blame for fatal accidents where youths are the victims. However, would it be better to condemn those kids to a life of fear of the outside world?
While it is true that parents can take a worthy role in the education of their children about the outside world, a child must learn about it for himself. Children, more so than the rest of us, have an intrinsic desire to explore and learn about the world around them, and to have fun doing so. Education through experience best helps a child to learn about the world around them. How does preventing them from experiencing the outside world help their development?
Once again, the politically-correct cotton-wool culture of modern day New Zealand is at work, trying to protect their child -and intervening in the lives of other people's children- from the culture of self-loathing and hopelessness that they created, by changing New Zealand culture from one of self-reliance to complete reliance on others.
Perhaps removing politically correct cotton-wool culture from every facet of a child's life may help us rebuild that culture and allow our children to discover the world around them, and to build their own ideas of right and wrong, rather than having those ideas forced down their throats by a politically-correct clique.
Libertarian Sus outlines the three main reasons for the continuing murders and abuse of children, such as Nia Glassie, in New Zealand:
"1. loser dads to bugger off and leave Mum with the kids, knowing that the poor old taxpayer - again - picks the tab, and
2. loser blokes to move in with single-Mum-with-kids-on-DPB, to be fed and screwed on demand, and
3. young women to screw anything with no personal regard for future consequences, ending up with children they really don't want, who are treated accordingly."
It's interesting how this coincides with Chris Trotter's new goals for social democracy, outlined on Friday:
"Labour has to understand that its state houses, and the welfare state that built them, was just the first, not the last, stage and crowning achievement of the socialist journey. Social democracy must never be about maintaining vast swaths of the population in perpetual electoral peonage.
State houses, along with our public health and education services, must be regarded as launching-pads for heroes, not stables for Labour's donkey-vote."
In effect, social democracy ought to be so bad that it's good, by getting people who once relied on the state for every whim to try to escape as far away as possible from the state houses in which they grew up!
Also of note, is the typical leftist groups who go around say that "it is our problem", without first addressing the root causes of the problem in the culture of complete and total dependency, and then expecting us to be spies on our neighbours to solve the prolem. Any culture which resorts to the expectation that people spying on their neighbours keeps those neighbours from doing terrible things is well over the edge.
With Obama's election result as the new President of the United States, America's taken a big leap to the Left.
However, this election result isn't about the new found sense of "hope" in American politics; it's a reaction to the smack of conservatism and a lack of willing to make proper free market reforms that have destroyed the Republican Party. It's Bush's budget deficits and Greenspan's policies of inflation, disguised as capitalism, which have triggered a reaction against the Republican Party in this election; and despite distancing himself from Bush rather well, McCain suffered for the same reasons that the NZ Labour Party is doing so.
And it's for precisely that same reason that Ronald Reagan did so much to help his party in the 1980s. America was hurting from the Oil Woes of the 1970s, and could not afford to look weak in front of the Soviet Union. Instead of following the detente policies of Jimmy Carter, he was a charismatic leader who made many substantial reforms, and in doing so made the Republican Party the party of reform.
Now, America is facing another economic crisis, high oil prices, a huge national debt, and a war on terror which has not delivered the results it promised (not that the terrorists shouldn't be hunted down and punished, but the general lack of doing so isn't helping). The Republicans have completely gone back on their principles, crying out about the "greed" on Wall Street* and how we'd all be better if we weren't unselfish. Philosophically, they are no different to the Democrats.
And that's where the problem lies.
So, hopefully, the overall outcome of this election will be good for America, as not only will Obama, providing he does try to keep his promises, prove socialism a disaster, but the Republicans will actually get back to their original principles of small government, and laissez-faire, with recent evidence and anecdotes to base the claims upon. The only question to ask now is, which politician is willing to promote the free market anymore? Best to promote socialism and the "all things to all men" policy under the guise of the free market, and do the same when socialism proves a disaster!
*Where do you not find "greed"?
A lot has been said recently of Labour's universal student allowances scheme, and it has been thoroughly debunked. The economics behind it is stupid, and so is the justification of "equality", "fairness", etc. So, I have nothing more to add to the general debates -apart from the fact that government hand-me-outs always work to destroy democracy and the political process.
Under a libertarian government which doesn't redistribute wealth, there is little incentive for different special interests and lobby groups (such as unions, businesses, organisations representing different groups of people) to heckle the government for cash -as the government recognises that it is not its job to hand out wealth. "Getting into bed" with government is a waste of resources. Similarly, in elections, the votes of a vast number of people don't go to whoever is promising the most benefits, as is the case today.
However, we have a government which is active in the redistribution of wealth -and when the government has money to give away, there's always going to be fighting about who should get it. Suddenly, it becomes worthy to try and get government to swing your way. The only problem is, that money could've gone to any other group, so different politically -minded groups start competing for money, and the end result is that whoever promises the biggest payouts gets the vote.
This is exactly what we're seeing today in New Zealand, and this "universal student allowance" is simply the latest bribe. And until government gets its hand out of our pockets, we'll continue having different lobby groups fighting and bribing politicians for resources.
The Te Aro Valley Meeting is usually one of the most entertaining political meetings in New Zealand, with good justification. Luckily, I was there on Tuesday to support Bernard Darnton, the Libz candidate running in Wellington Central, and there was a good Libertarianz turn out to the meeting.
The Highlights:
1) Michael Appleby, the candidate for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannibis Party -he was really funny, and said afterwards that he's "a libertarian at heart".
2) The Worker's Party candidate looked like he'd walked straight out of the 1930s.
3) Meeting up with the other Libz (normally, Tuesday's our meeting night, and we did pop around to a local bar for a few minutes) and seeing Peter McCaffrey from ACT on Campus again -he's a great guy.
4) Bernard's answer to the question about which party he'd vote for, if not his own. His answer: Labour -for comedic value! (and to show the NZ public the evils of big government)
Lowlights:
1) Sue Kedgley -there aren't strong enough words that I could use to desribe her! She was (/is) very maternalistic in her demeanor and politics, and someone who wouldn't think twice about controlling every aspect of your life.
2) The United Future Candidate -he was younger than all the other candidates and obviously had no idea about what he was promoting, and performed a highly irritationg song/rap at the end of the meeting.
3) All the other leftist candidates proposing the same "all things to all men" policy.
All in all, it was a much more interesting political meeting than the last one I attended (in middle-class Eastbourne)!
Every day, we hear socialists expounding the benefits of the welfare state, and paternalistic governmental policies. When asked about the expanding social problems within modern New Zealand society, the answer is something along the lines of "more welfare ... more spending ... more intervention in people's lives. Of course, Roger Douglas is always to blame.
The price we pay for letting socialists get away with expanding the government to a size in which it is so concerned with what's happening in the lives of productive, good people that it largely ignores the true problems of the welfare state, is, in the case of one Aucklander, murder.
However, it is not merely big government which is to blame here -the underlying cause of big government is, and why it intervenes in the lives of productive people in order to give money to criminals (this isn't the first case).
The underlying factor, behind the government's size and the sanction of criminals, is political correctness, fueled by the moral equivalency of modern philosophical and political thought. It's the idea that the murderer is the true victim of an "oppressive society", and that the man who was murdered deserved it (considering, after all, that he's a businessman; one of the most hated professions by socialists). If he gets stabbed or shot, moral equivalency says: "so what?"
And it's precisely because of political correctness (and its predecessors) that we have a big, intrusive government in the first place, and that the government considers wealth an object of restribution -on the basis of need- which:
a) destroys the self-esteem of welfare recipients;
b) provides no economic incentive to produce wealth; and
c) sends out the impression that the "need" of welfare recipients must come before the production of wealth, and as thus the people who produce wealth are viewed with suspicion.
The entire premise of the welfare state is based on the irrational thought that wealth isn't created; it just simply lands in the hands of certain people through luck, or "greed". It pays no attention to the fact that material resources, in the ground, by themselves, mean nothing.
Only man, through the use of his mind, can determine the proper use of resources -through the market's laws of supply and demand. Only man can put a value on a certain resource; and apply his mind in order to make the largest number of uses a resource can have, a reality.
Socialism and political correctness ignores this. The moral standard, according to both, is "need" -not man's life and happiness. Until we finally wake up to this, and realise what a philosophical scam socialism is, the victim count will rise.
No one doubts that Wall Street has been going through some tough times in the last few days, with some major collapses, bail-outs, and bankruptcy claims. Therefore, it is important to re-affirm that, in a free market, people and companies (especially the latter) need to be flexible.
The truth of the matter is, in recent times, both consumers and business owners have been protected, to some degree or another, by a safety net (for instance, the welfare state, or the recent bail-outs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the US). The safety net, by "guaranteeing" economic security, has destroyed the basic need to be flexible; which is one of the most important traits a person or a business could have in a free market. It has also removed much of the need to make intelligent investment decisions (hence, the sub-prime mortgage crisis).
In a time such as ours, when events that happen half way around the world can be known here within seconds, and economic circumstances are constantly changing, more rapidly now than ever. Companies have to continually adapt to the changing circumstances to survive.
This is what we're seeing on Wall Street at the moment. Instead of proper, if drastic, market correction taking place, more and more financial institutions are being bailed out. However, financial assistance only helps to delay the eventual collapse-and magnifies it, as it now impacts the government and its expenditure. Having taxpayers money go to inefficient banks and financial institutions is a waste of money.
There's also interest rates. For a number of years, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially low, which artificially bolstered the home loans market and, as thus, magnified the recent collapses.
The solution to all this madness, is, of course, to get the government out of the way of business, allowing them to succeed and fail based on their merits. By doing that, businesses will be forced to:
a) make smarter investment choices;
b) look for solutions in other areas for their problems, rather than making decisions under the pretense that the Government will bail us out;
c) force consumers to make smarter decisions in which companies to deal with;
d) stop irresponsible lending to people who can't pay it off.
All in all despite the stress that many people will have to endure during the market corrections going on at the moment, government intervention can only magnify the problem.
Paul McKeever, a Canadian SOLOist, has an outstanding article about the two US Presidential Candidates. I particularly like this snippet:
"McCain condemned the “me-first, country-second crowd”. He said he intends to honour the Stanley family for their sacrifice of their son. He told a touching tale of how he used to to do things “for [his] own pleasure; [his] own pride”, and how he “…didn’t think there was a cause more important than” himself. He explained that, thereafter, he discovered “the limits of [his] selfish independence”, learned that “no man can always stand alone”, and found that “nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself”. In short: it is right to sacrifice others, it is right to sacrifice oneself, and sacrifice will make you happy. Shorter still: dying makes one happiest of all.
Obama carved a path in the opposite direction, not referring to “sacrifice” at all. Instead, he explained, the “promise of America” is “the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.” Obama explained that that promise “…has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west…”.
The difference is astounding. Whereas McCain says it’s right to sacrifice of oneself, Obama says it is right to move where you will be kept by others."
Truly revealing.
However, I'm going for McCain in this one. Although, like his Democrat counterpart, he pays lip service to altruism, he:
a) wants to lower taxes in general; whereas Obama is all for raising taxes across the board (disgustingly, to the applause of many of his supporters), and the redistribution of wealth.
b) wants to continue fighting the War on Terror, which is, at best, something Obama is trying to avoid (even though McCain and Palin seem to be justifying the War on Terror as "God's plan" -sounds similar to jihad?)
With candidates like these two, I can see why most Americans don't vote.
It's rather fitting that in accordance with the Libertarianz' latest video, 'Ban It', that the Greens are pushing for ever more activities to be banned; the latest one is a ban on foreigners from buying property.
Greens co-leader Russel (with one 'l') Norman asks, "why should we allow Singaporean, Australian or American speculators to buy investment properties in our country, shutting first-time home buyers from the market?"
Why? Because their investment in New Zealand:
A) creates jobs in the local building industry, and in turns creates jobs in other areas such as forestry, mining etc, with the added competition driving up wage rates -meaning that buying homes becomes easier for people in those industries. And wouldn't it be more environmentally sustainable to use the resources in house construction here in New Zealand than shipping them overseas?
B) helps to make New Zealand a cleaner country. Wealthy foreigners buy into New Zealand based on its "clean, green" image, and unspoiled rural environment. Property rights give an incentive to keep it that way. If foreigners weren't allowed to buy property in New Zealand the demand for pristine areas would fall, and areas otherwise owned by foreigners would either not be owned at all, or by some not-so-wealthy New Zealander who probably wouldn't have the time or money to keep his property sparkling clean (and who wouldn't be as appreciative of the land as well). Either way, the incentive to keep land in a pristine condition grows smaller.
C) makes New Zealand more well known on the world stage. Without millions of taxpayer dollars going to some rich advertising agency to market the country as a tourist destination overseas, New Zealand will become known as a good holiday destination, with scenery not found anywhere else. This gives a boost to the tourist industry, which in turns provides more jobs for NZ citizens.
There you go, Norman. Three good reasons why, like all bans on voluntary human activity, a ban on foreigners buying property in New Zealand is not a good idea.
Not that the Greens understand the idea of "voluntary human activity".
The top 10 on the ACT Party List for the 2008 election goes as follows:
1) Rodney Hide
2) Heather Roy
3) Roger Douglas
4) John Boscawen
5) Undecided
6) Hilary Calvert
7) Peter Tashcoff
8) John Ormond
9) Colin du Plessis
10) Shawn Tan
Recognize #10? Probably not. (In fact, you should be congratulated if you recognize anyone from the entire second half of that list.) However, if you're in the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union, you'll definitely know him: he's Shawn Tan, and he's made big news in the Union recently.
As well as working for, as the ACT website says, three different Unions, he's also been involved in organizations such as the "Students for Justice in Palestine", a group that is, officially, "organized on democratic principles to promote justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination for the Palestinian people, with goals that include "the full decolonisation of all illegally held Palestinian lands, the end of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; the implementation of the right of return and repatriation of all Palestinian refugees to their original homes and properties, as well as an end to the apartheid system of discrimination against the Palestinian population". In other words, another anti-Israel group that is, because of its support of Israel, anti-United States.
Don't forget that he's also just come over from the Green Party.
_______________________
So, what about the other candidates on that list? Obviously, Rodney Hide and Heather Roy are at the top. Then, there's Roger Douglas and John Boscawen -not bad choices. As for numbers 6-9: well, there's a guy who's written a Maori novel. Another candidate's biggest political challenge is opposing the Trans-Tasman Therapeutics Bill. There isn't a lot to say about the others.
Also, consider who you don't see on the list. The people you see above you have replaced outstanding candidates such as Lindsay Mitchell, who is one of New Zealand's leading crusaders against Nanny State. Which is a damn shame -if ACT does get into Parliament, it would be nice to see her there.
_______________________
Some debate has also been occuring over the EPMU's course of action regarding it's new ACT Candidate; Whaleoil calls it "disgusting". However, I beg to differ; the Union, as a private entity, has the right to hire and fire whoever it wants -which is part of Libertarianism. However, it is very hypocritical that a Union should be doing so -considering that Unions originally pushed for the banning of such practices.
The City of Los Angeles, in yet another attempt to move America closer to socialism and state control, has put a one-year moratorium on all fast food outlets in South Los Angeles, with the stated goal of lowering obesity levels in the area, which are around 30%.
Will it lower obesity levels? No -most people in the South LA area live in some degree of poverty, so going to cheap fast food outlets scattered throughout the area usually save fuel and time, as opposed to going to better restaurants in other parts of town. More fuel, time and car use would be the outcome, which would result in less productive as more time and money is used trying to get something to eat.
Instead, a better idea is to make these people productive, or more so. Slash business regulations which prevent poor people from starting up their own businesses. Cut down employment regulations so people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder can have more job opportunities at their disposal. Also, provide proper protection for people in these areas, who have been inflicted more by crime, both property crime and violent crime, than any other group of people in any other area of LA.
Then you'd start to see a real change.
The recent challenge put out to students at Auckland University granting $3,700 to any student who makes a successful citizen's arrest of Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to New Zealand represents no more than stupidity on behalf of David Do, the President of the typical leftist student group Auckland University Students' Association.
The prize money was offered to any citizen who could arrest Rice for, according to the President of the Students' Association, "overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation of Iraq".
Left-wing students in New Zealand have had a long history of idiotic anti-US demonstrations. First, it was against American occupation in Vietnam -but never mind the North Vietnamese. Then it was against American nuclear submarines in NZ waters -submarines that have NEVER presented any threat to New Zealanders. Now, it is against the American occupation in Iraq.
But do any of these students recognize that the increased US presence in Iraq since the troop surge has actually led to a huge decrease in violence in Iraq? Have they considered that very little violence in Iraq is actually committed by fundamentalist Muslims -not Americans? Have they considered the effects of radical Islamism on Iraq?
The answer, as always, is no. Instead, they run a smear campaign against America -which is actually doing something right. Unfortunately for the socialist students, it's a bad cover of their true campaign against capitalism, individual rights and Western Civilisation.
