Explaining politicians

Light blogging due to Xmas rush; still finishing and framing commissions due for delivery Xmas eve. But this is worth a wider read. Again from the Future Freedom Foundation, one of the few daily newsletters I always look at:

With government controlling more and more of our economy, the fact that crooks have to go where the money is causes more and more of them to turn to government employment. However, there is probably an even stronger reason for individuals to become politicians. That is the power which accompanies political office. Many idealists think they know better than the ordinary person what is good for that person. They consider themselves a cut above the ordinary individual who just isn’t smart enough to know what he or she should do. Idealists seek government power to impose their ideas upon the rest of us. They may be personally honest insofar as not thinking of lining their own pockets with money but have little compunction about bolstering their egos with government power. This attitude explains the environmentalists, the do-gooders, and others whose ego causes them to seek government power to impose their ideas upon those of us who just want to make our way in a free market in open competition with everyone else. They don’t believe in a free market or voluntary actions. They do believe in controlling others by means of government power.
 

– Harry Hoiles

(Harry Hoiles passed away in 1998, former owner of Freedom Publications)

Truth column December 13

My December 13 Truth column is now on-line

I wish I knew if my sympathy for Brendan Horan, sacked NZ First MP, is warranted.
Anyone who has been dealt to by NZ First leader Winston Peters has my commiserations. 
The party is not referred to as ‘Winston First’ without good reason.
Saving his own skin is the name of the game.
But most of us aren’t privy to the details surrounding Horan’s family dispute so can only speculate on the injustice or otherwise of his dismissal from the party.

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Other Truth columns here

Ever more influential people question the war on drugs

...like Richard Branson, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Sir Richard Branson has never sat on an idea. A frenetic 40-year career in the public eye has seen him launch Virgin Group, with its 400 companies, while juggling time between world record attempts, Hollywood cameos and humanitarian drives. Lately, Branson has embarked on a new adventure, one no less challenging than attempting to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. As a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, Branson is sharing the spotlight with the burgeoning movement to end the U.S.-led war on drugs.

That crusade brought him to New York this week for the premiere of Breaking the Taboo, a documentary film asserting that the 40-year-old drug war, centered on prohibition rather than rehabilitation, has failed on all fronts. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the film splices images of brutal violence with interviews with global leaders, including former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who lambast the $1 trillion global war for overcrowding prisons while doing little to curtail drug use among an estimated 230 million people around the world. “Obviously, if the expected results were that we would eliminate serious drug use in America and eliminate the narco-trafficking networks, it hasn’t worked,” says Mr. Clinton during the film.


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Hat-tip Future Freedom

Advocating parental responsibility is a "crass" opinion

Yesterday I blogged about an unusually sensible editorial from the DomPost.

Today back to collectivist, failed, ideology in the letters column. (I wrote in support of the editorial but wasn't published.)

DomPost on child poverty report

Excellent editorial here stating the obvious but so often ignored principle that children are essentially their parent's responsibility.

Poverty harmful to children. No-one will dispute the central tenet of the child poverty report released this week by Children's Commissioner Russell Wills.
Kids who go to school hungry struggle to learn. Kids who live in damp, cold, crowded homes get sick. Kids  who grow up poor are more likely to struggle as adults.
Where readers may be inclined to part company with the commissioner's expert advisory group is over how to tackle the problem.

Would you want your rates spent on this?

The Palmerston North City Council is running a campaign to persuade those approached by beggars to consider giving to a charity rather than to the beggar.

Give Wisely – Pedestrians encouraged to give to charities not beggars

A campaign aimed at encouraging pedestrians to give to charities that look after beggars as opposed to giving money directly to beggars is being undertaken by the Palmerston North Safety Advisory Board and Palmerston North City Council.


The campaign is called “Give Wisely” and has a number of aims:

· Encouraging beggars to make positive choices.
· Educating pedestrians as to how they can best help beggars.
· Creating a more vibrant Broadway for pedestrians to enjoy.


Begging occurs in every metropolitan city in New Zealand and from time to time causes issues for both pedestrians and retailers. Begging is not illegal in New Zealand and Palmerston North City does not have an anti-begging bylaw. Regulatory solutions have not worked in other centres and hence a more collaborative community orientated approach has been taken. 

Community development officer Maria Prangnell says Palmerston North is lucky to have so many social services that are able to help by providing support from accommodation and food to psychological needs. “We, along with other agencies, work closely with beggars to ensure they have access to benefits, housing and health services.”


“Giving to those in need is something that should be encouraged especially when it’s to charities that offer a hand up to those on the bottom rung of society.”


Senior Sergeant Brett Calkin says while the campaign will not solve the issue of begging it will help draw attention to the issue. Which he says from time to time leads to those who participate in aggressive forms of begging being arrested. "The city has about ten regular beggars who tend to position themselves in key locations along Broadway Avenue but from time to time haunt other parts of the CBD".


The campaign will run over the summer months. Retailers will be asked to display posters in windows and flyers will be handed out to pedestrians asking them to give to the charities that offer a hand up.

Senior Sergeant Brett Calkin say aggressive forms of begging are not tolerated and anyone who feels intimidated should call the police immediately.

It amuses me that the council (which does worse than beg; it steals your money) then turns around and tells you how to spend the rest. Or perhaps I should view this initiative as an innovative way to deal with a nuisance rather than legislation.

If it works....

Truth column December 6

My December 6 Truth column is now on-line:

Even a deaf person watching Parliament would be left in no doubt what Social Development Minister Paula Bennett conveyed to Labour MP Jacinda Ardern as she made ‘zip it’ motions with her fingers, and condescendingly winked with the word ‘sweetie’.

More

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Xmas card 2012

Long time readers of my blog might remember I make a Xmas card each year. Whatever is new in our day-to-day lives usually features. Lexie fits the bill perfectly. I sketched her in pastels for the front and put the following photo on the back. She just exudes contentment. How lucky we are.

Children's Commissioner recommends cutting welfare to the childless

This particular report has so many different 'costs' for tackling child poverty it's hard to make a reasoned response .

Does the Children's Commissioner want "$50 million to $60 million", "$159 million" or "$1.2 billion a year"?

Whatever it is, his suggestion for finding the extra money is ill-considered.

He suggested that the accommodation supplement could be cut for people without children to help pay for it. The report says 58 per cent of accommodation supplements are paid to people without children, 21 per cent of whom are boarders.

On principle, why is it fair to punish those who don't have children to reward those who do?

In practice, many of those "boarders" are paying board to a sole parent on a benefit. The very people the Commissioner wants to give more money to.

Born onto a benefit

I expect child poverty to be topical again today as the 2012 Childrens Social Health Monitor (link is to 2011 version) is released. There's a fair bit about it in the press already by journalists who have a pre-release. The TV is reporting Jacinda Ardern complaining about one in 5 children being in homes supported solely by a main benefit. It was barely any better under Labour. Even when the unemployment rate had dropped to it's lowest point around 18 percent of children were still on benefits. That's because the DPB is entrenched.

The following is an article I wrote for The Truth which was published the week before last. It's not on-line so reproduced in full below.

BORN ONTO A BENEFIT

A huge amount is said about child poverty, but bugger all about what causes it.
By the end of last year 13, 634 of the babies born in the previous 12 months had a parent or caregiver relying on a benefit. Data supplied under the Official information Act reveals that 48 percent of these caregivers were Maori. Assuming the ethnicity of dependent children generally matches the ethnicity of their caregivers, 37 percent of all Maori children born in 2011 were on welfare by the end of the same year. The corresponding figure for non-Maori was less than half at 16 percent.
Most of these babies are born directly onto a benefit - usually the domestic purposes benefit. Some are first births. It's not unusual for their mothers to initially be dependent  on either the sickness benefit for pregnancy or the dole, then transfer to the DPB with the newborn in tow. But according to a Cabinet Paper publicly released earlier this year, in 2010 4,800 births were second (or subsequent) children being added to an existing  DPB. This happens most commonly in Whangarei, Whakatane, Rotorua, Kawerau and Wairoa, and the rate at which children are added has also been increasing.

The high rate of  NZ children born onto welfare  gives rise to numerous health and social problems down the line, not least abuse and neglect. We now know thanks to a recent Auckland University study that 83 percent of substantiated child abuse and neglect cases concern children who appear in the benefit system before the age of two.

There is an especial problem with Maori children. Not only are they more likely to be born onto a benefit, but they are more likely to have a very young mother who will have difficulty raising her child away from the sort of environmental risks that result in teenage parenthood in the first place; a dysfunctional family life, alcohol and drug abuse, family violence, transience, and crime. A strong correlation exists between the over-representation of Maori children on welfare and their marked predominance in many other negative statistics surrounding poor health and low educational achievement. Being born onto a benefit does not set them up for life.

Some of these children are going to be a cost to society for their entire lives. There isn't any equivalent NZ research but American studies into the backgrounds of prison inmates find many had very young mothers, were raised on welfare, or in foster care or other state institutions. That the NZ prison population is half Maori is almost certainly associated with the very high Maori rate of teenage birth; almost four times higher than non-Maori. Sadly, it isn't just the first-born children whose lives are affected, but those who follow as well.

Back in 2006 New Zealand Medical Association deputy chairman Don Simmers told a conference that too many women were contemplating pregnancy on a benefit. It's taken a long time - too long - but the government has now officially recognised the problem.

Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett believes that work has both social and economic benefits for parents and their children. Last month new rules were introduced to require people on the DPB with a youngest child aged 5 or older to look for and be available for part-time work. The Minister understands however that some mothers will try to avoid this new rule by having another baby. As a consequence, she says, "Sole parents who have another child while on a benefit will be exempt for [only] one year, in line with parental leave, before work obligations resume."

Unfortunately, this measure alone leaves loopholes. Cabinet illustrates the lengths some will go to when identifying children, "who are moved between households to avoid work expectations." There is currently no rule that prevents a parent from going off the benefit for a short period, having another baby, and returning with the clock starting afresh. This situation could have been avoided by adopting the US approach which simply time-limits the benefit. Federal law permits a maximum of 60 months over a lifetime of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (though individual states can deviate using their own funds). That regime unequivocally puts the responsibility firmly on the parent to limit their family size without totally dumping a safety net.

The other unthinkable work-dodge would be to produce a child annually. Ironically this outcome would be the exact opposite of what the government is trying to achieve. Again time-limiting the amount of welfare available would remove any incentive to go down this track.

Some favour capping the amount of money available to subsequent children born onto a benefit. Paula Rebstock's Welfare Working Group considered this option but was persuaded by the Ministry of Social Development that adverse affects on the child or children might outweigh any favourable effect on child-bearing patterns amongst beneficiaries.

Beneficiary advocates have reacted to Paula Bennett's new rule with hostility. Auckland Action Against Poverty spokesperson Sue Bradford says, "We believe that women in this country have the right to control their own reproduction." This encapsulates the conflict between the so-called rights of women and the rights of children. Knowingly bringing a child into the world with no ability to raise him independently or adequately is hard to justify at any level.

The Norm Kirk government of 1973 which bowed to pressure to provide statutory assistance for mothers who'd lost the support of a partner, would have been aghast if afforded a glimpse of a future in which supposedly single woman were allowed, and even encouraged by some, to breed on a benefit. Twenty two percent of all babies born in 2011 were on welfare by Xmas. But even pre-recession, when  NZ briefly enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate in the world during 2007,  the percentage only dropped to eighteen. Having babies on a benefit is part of the NZ culture. That's what's primarily driving this country's child poverty scandal. In a word, irresponsibility; irresponsibility of the people who produce the kids, but arguably worse, irresponsibility of the society that sanctions it.

What's $300,000?

How much compo should we pay Susan Couch?

Dunno. What's 11 years on the DPB living in Auckland worth?

$300,000.

Righto.

Home schooling - a right we take for granted

I'm shocked. Germany hates home-schooling apparently.  The Welfare State We're In has linked to a New American article about the persecution parents face in Germany and Sweden if they want to home school their children - THEIR children.

Earlier this year I made comment about how rules-bound and obedient Germans are in my experience. Perhaps the insistence on 'state education only' is part of the picture.

In October of 2005, the Neubronner family (pictured) decided to homeschool. In America, that would have been the end of the story. The Neubronners, however, lived in Germany, where government has taken an extreme hardline stance with the aim of eradicating home education altogether. The loving German parents applied for permission to educate their two young sons, Morris and Thomas, at home. Unsurprisingly, their application was rejected.

Over the next few months, the battle seemed interminable. They sued for permission to homeschool and lost. Then they appealed. Again, they lost. Finally, in the summer of 2006, the Neubronners struck a deal with school authorities: The boys could be homeschooled provided they were tested regularly. Like the vast majority of homeschoolers, the kids did great on the government’s tests.

Despite the high marks, or perhaps because of them, eventually, authorities decided to put an end to the successful home education scheme. The Neubronner parents were threatened with massive fines, and like many other homeschoolers in Germany, even a potential jail sentence was put on the table if they refused to comply. During that time, the family appealed all the way up to the German constitutional court.

As the fight was unfolding, the family’s story became national news, with mother Dagmar, a biologist and publisher, becoming the face of the secular homeschooling movement in Germany. The media coverage ranged from friendly to neutral because the family seemed — aside from the homeschooling, at least — like a rather “normal,” well-integrated, intellectual family without any particular ax to grind against government schools; they simply wanted to exercise their right not to use that particular government “service.”

When the family refused to pay the exorbitant fines, officials burst into their home and ransacked it, searching for something, anything, to take with them. They found nothing worthwhile, but the horror was just getting started. Finally, officials froze the family’s bank accounts. They even threatened to arrest both parents and auction their home to pay the fines.

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What's yours is mine...

"Stay on the dole"

"Stay on the dole"  WINZ tells beneficiaries

WINZ refuses to put up a few hundred dollars to save thousands


These are the headlines we'd be reading if Work and Income was innocent of the charges Jacinda Ardern is levelling at them. 

An illogical sentiment abounds about keeping the unemployed domiciled here, as if they are worth more as potential employers than as an unemployed cost. Beyond the silliness of that, if someone can find work in Australia and be productive and satisfied, why hold them down on an unemployment benefit here? It makes no sense.

Another storm in a teacup manufactured by airhead Ardern.

Student allowances - almost 100,000

The statistics for 2011 have just been released and student allowance recipients for 2011 reached 97,308. That's an increase of 41,757 since 2005 or 75 percent. I think of student allowances as benefits even though they come out of the Ministry of Education budget. After all, if they weren't on a student allowance many would be on  the dole.

Looking at the allowances in the context of unemployment, in 1991 unemployment peaked at 11 percent. In that year 72,479 students received an allowance. The population  was smaller then but not by much with respect to the relevant demographic.

In 1991 the 15-24 population was 556,000.
In 2011 it was 644,000.

(Of course not all student allowance recipients fall into that age group but most do.)

On the face of it the ratio of young people receiving a student allowance to the unemployment rate is higher today.

Truth column November 22

My November 22 Truth column is now on-line:

Delegates at last weekend’s Labour Party conference decided electorate committees should have a 50% female quota.

Electorate committees are the muscle behind the candidate. I chaired one for ACT. Had anyone instructed me to turn away a willing and capable male member because I didn’t have a female counterpart, I would have resigned. It’s loony. But these days, Labour is loony.

More

Other Truth columns here

Talking up poverty

Earlier in the week Bob  Stephens and Charles Waldegrave two long-time anti-poverty campaigners wrote a piece for the NZ Herald which  looked at the cost of housing rental, the largest weekly outlay people have. They compared two and three-bedroom properties in the lowest income areas. Then made this statement:

If the children are of different genders and one is adolescent they would normally require separate bedrooms, so a three-bedroom house would be needed.

When I was very young my Mum and dad bought their first home and it had three bedrooms. Lucky me got one to myself because the three brothers had to share. When we moved here it was considered the height of luxury to build a four bedroom house with two toilets no less. Two brothers still shared.

Many - if not most - of the families discussed here are sole parent. If I was the sole parent with a low income I'd been opting for the smallest home in the best neighbourhood - maybe even one bedroom if the children were very young. The idea that a single parent with one boy and one girl automatically requires a three bedroom home is silly. But it does help the case of those who want to push up costs as high as they can.

I am not denying that low income families struggle. But the inevitable conclusion that government has to direct more money into these homes is not a given. You can argue the moral case, the economic case, the political case.... But perhaps the worst aspect of this type of thinking and analysis is it takes away from the poor the expectation that they can be smart, adaptive and innovative; that they can work out for themselves how to make their lives better tomorrow by making some sacrifices today. It's thoroughly patronising and paternalistic and will not deliver some sort of socialist nirvana. It will result in a helpless, dependent population who one day wake up and realise that the all-giving state is now their worst enemy.

Strike that.  It's already happened.

Questions for the first of the month

Why is it that banks can charge you account fees on a non-working day but not make direct credit transfers till working days?

Will Labour accept John Tamihere's membership application?

Why did someone send me an e-mail saying that this December features 5 Saturday's, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays and according to the Chinese this was very, very rare and in order to avoid great misfortune I should pass it on? (So rare it last happened in 2007)

How the heck will I get done what I need to get done between now and the 25th? (Not by blogging)

Why do dogs pee exactly where another has just been? (Perhaps they've been observing human behaviour).

Why are children allowed to be held as hostages to their pathetic parent's lifestyle choices?

Should I or shouldn't I waste my time reading about smarmy from Palmy? (He won't be giving JT the big tick today)

Foodbanks are not soup kitchens

From the World Socialist Web Site, an article yesterday began:

Since the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, there has been a huge expansion in the UK of soup kitchens, known euphemistically as food banks, as a result of growing poverty.

A euphemism is "The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive."

But a food bank is exactly that.  A place where one person can contribute groceries and another can withdraw them. It is NOT a soup kitchen. Another left-wing distortion of language. To stir the emotions they invoke harsh historical images.

The article concerns UK legislation that will see some emergency welfare devolved to local councils.

New legislation will for the first time make charities, rather than the welfare state, the main provider of emergency food supplies to those fallen on hard times.

Another exaggeration when considering the next sentences;

From next April, the central government-administered Social Fund, which provides emergency loans and grants, will be abolished as a result of the 2012 Welfare Reform Act and the responsibility handed over to local authorities. The new funding is set at 2005 budget levels and not ring-fenced (protected), so local authorities will inevitably cut the number of emergency loans and refer those in trouble to food banks instead.

 Note the difference between "will" in the first quote and "inevitably" in the second.

Anyway, this is a sensible development. The more localised and intimate welfare assistance becomes, the more the wheat can be sorted from the chaff.

The article goes on to describe the increasing call on UK food banks. But that can happen regardless of economic conditions.

Note the growth in NZ (Auckland I think) usage of foodbanks in the first part of last decade when the unemployment rate and numbers on benefits were dropping.

Mark Lundy appeals to the Privy Council

It's become terribly fashionable to espouse the innocence of convicted murderers. The latest cause celebre is Mark Lundy. These particular fashion-followers are forking-out to take his case to the Privy Council in London and have even concocted a name for themselves, FACTUAL (For Amber and Christine - Truth Uncovered About Lundys). It's such a clever acronym, having thought of it they'd feel bound to proceed. Who'd want to waste it?

In the absence of religion, lots of substitute faiths take hold. Some believe in vast conspiracies, some in new-age health regimes, some in political ideologies (mine is individual freedom), and some in the wrongful conviction and detention of a particular criminal.

Some faiths are a search for truth; others are a denial. I'd put barking up the Mark-Lundy- is-innocent tree in the latter category. But if his supporters want to chuck their money away, that's their business.