DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: People who shouldn’t be voting, and someone you ought to vote for!

Libz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week:    People who shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and a person for whom you ought to vote!

• DAILY TELEGRAPH (UK): “Prisoners to get the vote for the first time”
  The British PM is helpless in the face of a European court ruling which could give 70,000 prison inmates the right to vote…
  
  THE DOCTOR SAYS: The British government could face 50 million pounds in compensation claims from prisoners and legal sanctions from the European Union if it doesn’t allow prisoners to vote in elections
      The edict from the European Court of Human Rights comes after court action by the delightful John Hirst, who killed his landlady with an axe. Already, a lovely man who raped and killed his seven year old niece has launched a legal challenge saying (get this) that his human rights were being breached by being denied a vote. Perhaps his niece’s family should have been able to vote on what sentence he should have received.
  
  THE DOCTOR’S REMEDY:  There are lessons here for New Zealand:
  • We should NEVER surrender national sovereignty to organizations such as the UN (which would probably mean the recidivist bully Helen Clark in charge of our lives and property again)
  • Upon conviction for a felony, a person’s right to vote is cancelled until full restitution is completed by the perpetrator (e.g. reimbursing an insurance company for the life insurance payout in the case of a murderer, or a family for the loss of an uninsured loved one, the amount to be decided by a judge in consultation with the victims of the crime)
  • Non-crimes, such as self-medicating and the facilitation thereof, should be expunged from the law books. Prison should be reserved for people who harm other people or their property. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that homosexuality was a crime.

 

• RADIO NZ NEWS: “Film funds better spent creating jobs – candidate”
  Independent Mana by-election candidate Matt McCarten says the money the Government is giving Warner Bros to make The Hobbit would be better spent creating jobs for the 3000 unemployed in the electorate…
  
  THE DOCTOR SAYS: The former Alliance Party president demonstrates a breathtaking ignorance of matters economic.  No surprises there. 
      First, McCarten claims the government is “giving Warner Brothers money.”  Rubbish. The government is stealing less off Warner Bros than it steals from other tax victims. It is giving Warner Bros a tax break. Something local businesses should get as well.
      Second, he seems to think that all employment comes, not from consumer demand, entrepreneurship and scientific innovation, but from State intervention. The man is a moron. Put 1000 politicians and 1000 union reps on an island by themselves without entrepreneurs or inovators, and see how much employment (or survival) they manage.
      Meanwhile, National’s Mana candidate Hekia Parata demonstrates she shares McCarten’s limited intellectual scope, stating: “There is no money for job creation.” Implicitly meaning, no government money.
      Of course there is money available for job creation, and there there would be more available if businesses were fleeced less by the government and allowed to use their money as they wished in peaceful pursuit of profit, security, happiness and capital accumulation—which is to say in this context, on job creation.
  
  THE DOCTOR’S REMEDY:  The voters of Mana ought to consider an alternative plan from the Libz Party:
  • Give everyone a tax break – make the first $50,000 of income tax-free. That would help every working person in Mana to realize their own ambitions, not the ambitions of central and local government politicians. Imagine the reduction in IRD bureaucracy!
  • Remove licensing laws and regulation from first- and second-tier jobs, by which I mean the sort of work that young and low-skilled can use as stepping stones to more specialized and skilled work and greater earnings—jobs such as taxi-driving, street vendor work, firewood supplying, gardening work, lawnmowing, child-minding. Jobs where the increasing burden of regulation and compliance costs discourage people from taking that first step out of the welfare trap.
  • Check out fighting Irishman and Libz candidate in the Mana by-election  Sean Fitzpatrick on TVNZ7 tonight at 9.10 p.m.  on Back Benchers, in a live telecast from the Sand Bar pub in Porirua. Or better still, be there early, watch it in person, and say hello to Sean! 

 

• RADIO NZ NEWS: “Babies Must Be Breast Fed, Says New Indonesian Law”
  A law has been passed in Indonesia that stipulates all babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their life…
  
  · Achtung! All Indonesian babies must be EXCLUSIVELY breastfed for the first six months of their lives
  · Anyone who disobeys can be fined $15,000 and sentenced to A YEAR IN PRISON!
  · Companies will be forced to provide employees with breast feeding facilities
  
  THE DOCTOR SAYS: I just came across this piece of sheer lunacy, and I’m still wondering if this is actually a piss-take. Or hoping.
      Actually, it’s just ruined my day. My blood is boiling. Straight from the Jim Anderton School of What-Isn’t-Banned-Is-Made-Compulsory, this exemplifies why state intervention in matters apart from maintaining the rule of law and providing for national defence is bad bad bad!
      That’s three times triple-plus bad.
      If that had been law in New Zealand in 1961, I would not be writing this column today. Instead, my name could have been one of those being used on David Garrett’s passports. Because, you see, as an infant, I failed to thrive, lost weight, and my parents thought I was going to die. My life was saved when the breast milk I was getting was supplemented by my parents feeding me Farex brand baby food, made by that evil multinational pharmaceutical giant Glaxo.
  THE DOCTOR’S REMEDY: To the breast-feeding fundamentalists and the legislators that helped push this law though in Indonesia, I say a loud “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny - when the
government fear the people, there is liberty.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson