All posts by Richard

ALCP, Peter Dunne, Psychoactive Substances Act, Vote 2014

Richard gets Dunne

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pne8AZvjYqo

Good evening. Thank you all for coming.

My name is Richard Goode, I’m here tonight representing the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. I’m the Legalise Cannabis Party’s candidate for the Mana electorate just north of here.

We have one policy. To legalise cannabis

Before another decade is up, New Zealand will almost certainly follow the lead of Colorado and other U.S. states and legalise cannabis for recreational, spiritual, medicinal and industrial purposes.

But, when the time comes, we need to legalise cannabis sensibly and safely. That’s why we need Legalise Cannabis Party representation in Parliament.

What does sensible, safe cannabis law reform look like? It looks like Colorado, the U.S. state where, since 1 January this year, cannabis is now regulated like alcohol and tobacco.

What’s been the result since Colorado legalised cannabis? Positive outcomes. The crime rate? Down. The homicide rate? Down. The suicide rate? Down. Motor vehicle accidents? The road toll is down.

The immigration rate? Up! Many of you will have seen recent documentaries about a strain of cannabis called Charlotte’s Web and its use in treating epilepsy. Whole families have picked up and moved to Colorado, since Charlotte’s Web cannabis is the only thing that stops life-threatening epileptic seizures in their children.

Now let me tell you what sensible, safe cannabis law reform DOESN’T look like.

It doesn’t look like the recent legal highs debacle which was presided over by the National government’s Associate Minister of Health, Peter Dunne.

Instead of legalising safe, natural cannabis, Peter Dunne gave the Ministry of Health’s seal of approval to dozens of so-called “synthetic cannabis” products that actually contained 11 different untested, unsafe research chemicals with almost no history of human use about whose likely long-term health effects we knew absolutely nothing.

And this was after he’d made the following promise.

We are going to reverse the onus of proof so the manufacturers of these products have to prove they are safe before they can bring them on to the market.

Here’s a harrowing tale of addiction from a friend who switched from smoking natural cannabis to smoking one of Dunne’s chemical concoctions, thinking it must be safe because it had been approved as “low risk”.

im 34 been smoking buds since i was 15 never had an issue had sweet jobs good life got my dream job as a dairy farm manager everything going sweet till i heard my boss was going to do drug testing so i thort id give this synthetic shit ago didnt expect much since i[t] was sold in dairys and yea it was down hill from there. one packet and i was hooked like with weed i could go a couple or more days without it with this shit i had to have it and i couldnt stop myself honest sometimes i would cry asking myself what the fuck i was doing tho the whole time chuffing away on the pipe like a cracker.

There were hundreds of such cases of severe addiction, psychosis, and seizures. Yes, seizures.

Right now, thanks in large part to the Associate Minister of Health, seriously ill New Zealanders, including children with life-threatening seizures, are being denied legal access to the medicine they need.

Peter Dunne’s bright idea was to give the MOH’s seal of approval to chemicals that caused addiction, psychosis, and seizures in our young people instead.

Now, the guidelines I was given for tonight were to introduce myself, my party and my party’s policy’s, but also to discuss local issues.

In fact, I’ve just been talking about the biggest local issue facing the Ohariu electorate.

Peter Dunne entered Parliament as a Labour Party MP when David Lange’s Labour Party won a landslide victory in 1984. We got rid of Muldoon, but we got Dunne! He’s been propping up both Labour and National government’s and impeding safe, sensible drug law reform ever since.

He did a deal with Helen Clark in 2002. One of the terms of the support agreement that Peter Dunne insisted on was

The government will not introduce legislation to change the legal status of cannabis and will implement a comprehensive drug strategy aimed at protecting young people and educating them on the dangers of drug use.

The voters of Ohariu will be the judge of how good a job the man behind the legal highs debacle did at protecting young people and educating them on the dangers of drug use.

Please, this September 20, give your party vote to the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and your Mana electorate vote to me.

And, Ohariu voters, please consider very carefully to whom you give your electorate vote.

Thank you.

TawaUnionChurchSlider

ALCP, Cannabis, Vote 2014

Ministry of Cannabis

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Regulatory Regime for Cannabis Announced

The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party announced its regulatory policy today, calling for a new Ministry of Cannabis.

The new regulatory authority would be established at a cost of $10 million according to ALCP’s shadow budget.

ALCP regulatory spokesman Dr Richard Goode said the Cannabis Ministry would issue licences for the commercial cannabis trade and help with training programmes for those interested in the industry.

“Licensing the commercial production and sale of cannabis will allow conditions to be put in place such as an R18 age-limit and a tax regime,” he said.

“Home-grown cannabis and social dealing among friends will not require a licence and will be tax-free. The medical marijuana industry will be offered tax-breaks so they only pay 50% of regular taxes. The hemp industry will pay regular taxes, while the commercial-recreational industry will pay excise duty on top of regular taxes.”

The definition of adult will be set at 18-years-old or above, while the limits for personal use will be set as high as possible in negotiation with the Government. Excise duty will be no higher than 15%, similar to the Colorado model.

This allows easy access to personal or medical cannabis while ensuring that commercial players contribute the most to public revenue.

Dr Goode said the new authority would also offer training programmes to help get the industry off the ground.

“Doctors will be offered training about the medical benefits of cannabis and how to prescribe it for patients,” he said.

“There will also be courses for those who want to get more involved in the hemp industry.”

These regulations will encourage cannabis commerce while ensuring an even playing field and and a market driven approach to pricing. All New Zealanders will be better off once legal cannabis sales are contributing to public revenue.

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The new Ministry of Cannabis will have the following areas of responsibility:

Stop the Arrests:

  • Instruct Police to use their discretion and stop arresting cannabis users.
  • Instruct courts to drop all pending cannabis charges.
  • Ensure cannabis is removed from the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Overturn Convictions:

  • Ensure all cannabis convictions are quashed and a Royal pardon issued.
  • Instruct Corrections to release all prisoners who are serving cannabis only sentences.
  • Instruct Corrections to wipe all outstanding fines and probation sentences for cannabis offences.
  • Establish a judicial panel to issue compensation for historical cannabis convictions.

Personal Use:

  • Allow adults to possess and use cannabis for personal use.
  • Allow adults to grow cannabis at home for personal use.
  • Allow adults to trade cannabis with each other for personal use.
  • Instruct IRD not to tax personal cannabis use.

Medical Cannabis:

  • Allow medical patients to use cannabis and access it from a doctor or pharmacy.
  • Allow caregivers to grow cannabis for individual patients.
  • Issue licences to grow medical cannabis on a commercial scale.
  • Issue licences to process or wholesale medical cannabis on a commercial scale.
  • Issue licences to dispensaries and pharmacies to retail medical cannabis.
  • Train doctors in how to prescribe medical cannabis.
  • Instruct IRD to give a 50% tax-break to the medical cannabis industry.

Industrial Hemp:

  • Allow anyone to register to grow industrial hemp without a licence.
  • Run training programmes in growing industrial hemp.
  • Run training programmes for processing and manufacturing industrial hemp products.
  • Allow any business to retail industrial hemp products.
  • Instruct IRD to tax industrial hemp at the usual tax rate.

Commercial-Recreational Cannabis:

  • Issue licences to grow cannabis on a commercial scale.
  • Issue licences to process or wholesale cannabis for commercial purposes.
  • Issue licences to operate a retail cannabis outlet.
  • Instruct IRD to tax commercial cannabis sales at the usual rate with an added excise duty.
  • Allow adults to buy personal amounts of cannabis from retail outlets.

International Trade:

  • Issue licences to import cannabis products into New Zealand.
  • Issue licences to export cannabis products from New Zealand.

07.30.13news-capitol-city-care-medical-marijuana-fixed-edit

Epistemology, Gospel music, I Built The Cross, Romans

Sensus divinitatis

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newscientistgodissue

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (NIV)

A while ago I borrowed a friend’s copy of the New Scientist’s special edition, the God Issue. (Note to self: Return it!) Contrary to the tiresome claim of online atheist trolls, that everyone’s born an atheist, it turns out that

The vast majority of humans are “born believers”, naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and easily acquired, and to attain fluency in using them.

Justin L. Barrett, the author of the article, then goes on to say

This attraction to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment, and while it tells us nothing about the truth or otherwise of religious claims it does help us see religion in an interesting new light.

Of course, Barrett would say that. And, of course, that’s not the only explanation of human beings’ natural tendency to theism. Reformation theologian John Calvin wrote that

God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges

Calvin explains, Barrett explains away. The distinction between explaining and explaining away is an important one. I think the consistent atheist/Naturalist incurs an unfeasibly costly explanatory overhead.

But that discussion’s for another day. Really, this somewhat shallow blog post of my own is just a protracted excuse to post some awesome Christian deathcore from awesome Christian deathcore band I Built The Cross.

For somewhat greater depth on the current topic, I recommend Glenn Peoples’s awesome blog post Born Atheists? Science and Natural belief in God.

See also Psalm 19:1 (for something a little more soothing).

Luke, Parables, Trees

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

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barren_fig_tree

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.

And he said to the vinedresser, “Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?”

And he answered him, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” (ESV)

Parables, Trees

The Parable of the Giving Tree

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41-atxl1

Once there was a tree … and she loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest.
He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples.
And they would play hide-and-go-seek.
And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the boy loved the tree … very much.
And the tree was happy.

But time went by.
And the boy grew older.
And the tree was often alone.
Then one day the boy came to the tree and the tree said, “Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy.”
“I am too big to climb and play” said the boy. “I want to buy things and have fun. I want some money.”
“I’m sorry,” said the tree, “but I have no money. I have only leaves and apples. Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy.”
And so the boy climbed up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away.
And the tree was happy.

But the boy stayed away for a long time … and the tree was sad.
And then one day the boy came back and the tree shook with joy and she said, “Come, Boy, climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and be happy.”
“I am too busy to climb trees,” said the boy. “I want a house to keep me warm,” he said. “I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?”
“I have no house,” said the tree. “The forest is my house, but you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy.”
And so the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house.
And the tree was happy.

But the boy stayed away for a long time.
And when he came back, the tree was so happy she could hardly speak.
“Come, Boy,” she whispered, “come and play.”
“I am too old and sad to play,” said the boy.
“I want a boat that will take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?”
“Cut down my trunk and make a boat,” said the tree. “Then you can sail away … and be happy.”
And so the boy cut down her trunk and made a boat and sailed away.
And the tree was happy … but not really.

And after a long time the boy came back again.
“I am sorry, Boy,” said the tree,” but I have nothing left to give you – My apples are gone.”
“My teeth are too weak for apples,” said the boy.
“My branches are gone,” said the tree. ” You cannot swing on them – ”
“I am too old to swing on branches,” said the boy.
“My trunk is gone, ” said the tree. “You cannot climb – ”
“I am too tired to climb” said the boy.
“I am sorry,” sighed the tree. “I wish that I could give you something … but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry …”
“I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.”
“Well,” said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, “well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.”
And the boy did.
And the tree was happy.

stumped

by Shel Silverstein

Parables, Sepultura, Trees

The Parable of the Diseased Tree

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Latticed_Oak_Roots_-_geograph.org.uk_-_395650

A man lived in the Great Plains, many years ago. He had only one source of wood for all his needs: a beautiful large oak tree growing behind his cottage. Anyone passing by could see that this was truly a beautiful tree, and of course it was an oak tree so it must be strong. It would protect him from the prairie’s storms and provide shade from the sun.

This man was very happy about his tree. It was really all he had ever wanted to meet his many needs. It was large enough to provide firewood from its fallen branches, its many limbs could be cut as he needed them for building furniture. The man was very happy.

One day the man decided to make a chair, so he took his saw and went out to his tree. He climbed onto one of the lower limbs and began to saw it off. As his saw bit into the wood, the man got a funny feeling. Something just didn’t seem right. As he finished sawing the limb suddenly snapped as if it were brittle, shooting splinters into the man’s eyes. He was surprised and hurt, but he managed to clear his eyes and slid down to where the limb had dropped to the ground.

He looked at the end where he had made his cut and to his amazement he saw not the solid, gleaming bands of a healthy oak, but a pithy, brittle mass riddled with holes. The limb would not serve for furniture – no way. And the man realised that something was amiss. He began having suspicions about his beautiful tree.

The next day the man tried again, for life presses on, and he really needed a chair. So he climbed again to another limb, and began cutting. And again, just as he was about to complete his task, the limb shattered and sprayed him with sharp splinters. This time he was prepared, and managed to turn his head, but the splinters were sharp and they hurt him nonetheless. Again he climbed down, and discovered the same pithy, brittle mass.

With this the man realised that his precious tree was not well. It was diseased. It was infested with an insect, the prairie oak flea, which was known to cripple trees, but not to kill them.

As the disease progressed, the man realised that he was not getting from his tree the things he counted on for his safety and comfort. The leaves became thin and scattered, and the tree could not provide the shade that he needed from the hot sun. When storms came, instead of the sheltering buffer he had hoped for, the tree would yield its weakened limbs to the winds and they crashed down on his cottage roof. Once a limb broke right through in the midst of a storm and the man spent a cold wet night waiting for daylight so he could close the hole.

But still, the man loved his tree. It was a beautiful tree. And it was an oak. It was HIS oak. “I love my tree,” said the man. “I know it has a disease, but I love the tree nonetheless. I chose to build my home in its shelter and I am committed to staying with it.”

One day a passing wagon stopped, and the man in the wagon asked, “Why do you stay under this sick tree? It’s causing you so much pain, and there are things you need that it doesn’t give you?”

“Oh, no,” said the man. “ I love my tree. It’s the disease that I hate. The tree is still a beautiful tree, and it is my life.”

“But look,” said the man in the wagon. “Its wood is rotten. Its shade is useless. It harms you in storms when it should shelter you. And you have no furniture because its wood is brittle and pithy.”

“Oh, no,” said the man. “You must learn to separate the disease from the tree. Otherwise you’ll become embittered.”

“Well,” said the man in the wagon, “if the disease is separate, then where is the tree without the disease? I don’t see a healthy tree standing next to a disease. All I see is a pithy, bug-eaten tree that can barely stand on its own. If your tree is such a good provider, why is that you have so little, and what you have is patched and leaking?”

The man thought for a while, and then said, “You know, maybe you are right. No matter how much I say I love that tree, it will never give me the things I need from it. I guess you’re right. The TREE and the DISEASE are all the same thing. I don’t have a tree and a disease. I have a DISEASED TREE. And the longer I hang out under this tree, the longer I’m going to live without the shade and the wind shelter and the furniture that I need, and the more likely I’m going to be conked on the head by a falling limb. Maybe I need to start looking for another tree that can give me what I need…”

The man thought about it, and a little later he decided to look around for another place to have his home. And the man found a spot, even better than the one he had been living in, with a healthy maple growing nearby.

He hated to think of building his home all over again, but he was, at heart, a courageous man, and he decided to try. In a few months he had a new home, shaded in the summer, shielded from the wind, safe during storms, and he was able to build beautiful furniture for his study. He lived there, mostly happily, writing to his many friends who also had problem trees.

His old tree continued to grow in its same spot, and continued dropping limbs during every storm, just as before.

by Richard Skerritt

Apartheid, Hell, National Party, Peter Dunne, Racism, Unicorns, Vote 2014

Hikois from hell

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Hikoi-foreshore

It’s National Party policy to abolish the Maori seats but John Key says not on his watch.

Dropping Maori seats would mean ‘hikois from hell’

Abolishing the Maori seats would rip the country apart and attract “hikois from hell”, John Key said.

Speaking to the Herald last week before the release of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, the Prime Minister said that while it remained National Party policy to abolish the seats, even if he had enough numbers to do so, he would abolish them only with the agreement of Maori.

“It would divide the nation,” he told the Herald’s Hot Seat series . “Despite the fact that a lot of people say they don’t like it and they were there for a particular reason, actually it would be an incredibly divisive thing to do to New Zealand and New Zealanders.”

“Do you really want to rip a country apart? I’ll tell you what would happen – hikois from hell.”

Whether you were on the Maori roll or the general roll everyone got two votes.

While abolishing the seats has been long-standing policy for National, Act and United Future policy, the Maori Party’s confidence and supply agreement with National saw it parked as an active issue. But even if the Maori Party were not in the next Parliament, Mr Key has in effect protected them.

Political party 1law4all isn’t happy. On Facebook they posted

Post by 1law4all.

 
But I agree with John Key.

Having a Maori electoral roll as well as a general electoral roll is not, in itself, racist. It is merely arbitrary. Everyone gets two votes, regardless of which roll they’re on.

What’s racist about the Maori roll is that only Maori get to choose whether to be on it or to be on the general roll. If we opened up the Maori roll to non-Maori, there’d be no racism.

And no problem. Because we have to divide the country up into electorates somehow. (Or do we?!) Dividing the country up geographically is arbitrary. We might just as well divide the country up according to the age of the voters. It would be instructive to do so. Who would win the 20-year-old’s seat? Who would win the 60-year-old’s seat? Now we’re talking ageism, instead of racism!

But isn’t our current system geographicalist? I’d love to be enrolled in the Ohariu electorate so that I could vote for someone other than Peter Dunne. But I can’t. I’m stuck with Mana. (It’s like school zoning, I’m against it.)

Key’s more important point is that abolishing the Maori seats today would lead to “hikois from hell”. That’s a euphemism for blood on the streets. Do we really want to trade a harmless anachronism for violent civil unrest?

Retaining the Maori seats is the small price we pay for keeping a lid on the simmering resentment of some Maori towards the descendants of the colonials whom they believe inflicted a holocaust on their ancestors leaving them disadvantaged to this day.

Retaining the Maori seats is a good social insurance policy. Much like retaining the dole. The dole costs [from memory, I might come back and edit this figure] $18,000 per year per beneficiary. Incarceration costs [again, this figure is from memory] $90,000 per year per inmate. If we abolished the dole, there’d be a crime wave tsunami as an army of unemployed, suddenly bereft of income, found thieving (and worse) ways to make ends meet. Kiwis, beneficiary and non-beneficiary alike, would suffer. So let’s not abolish the dole, mmmkay?

Let’s be clear. The productive and colour blind are being held to ransom. In paying the dole and retaining the Maori seats, we are complicit in perpetuating unjust systems of social welfare and racist democracy. But what choices do we have?

Remember, too, that people’s welfare is a consideration that must temper considerations of justice. Okay, now I look forward to my co-bloggers dumping on me from a great height. See the comments section below.