You might think that the party with the most party votes, keen to form a government, would negotiate with its nearest ideological neighbour, with a view to forming a coalition.
It never happens.
It’s a myth that MMP produces “kingmakers”. Winston Peters is a pawn, not a kingmaker.
[Hat tip: CrusaderRabbit]
Andrew Hansen created “a lounge music arrangement using the actual words to the Cannibal Corpse song, Rancid Amputation.” He separated the lyrics from the music in order to prove a point, viz., that “the lyrics aren’t the problem, it’s the music.”
Hansen is wrong. The music’s not the problem. The lyrics aren’t really the problem, either. It’s the album covers!
I first listened to Cannibal Corpse in 1990, when I purchased their debut album, Eaten Back to Life. I liked it, and purchased their next album, Butchered at Birth, in 1990. I liked it not so much. The album art grossed me out, and with subsequent releases the album art only got more and more gross.
The band’s album art (most often done by Vincent Locke) and its lyrics, which draw heavily on horror fiction and horror films, are highly controversial. At different times, several countries have banned Cannibal Corpse from performing within their borders, or have banned the sale and display of original Cannibal Corpse album covers.
I gave up listening to Cannibal Corpse, until recently.
Currently, my favourite Corpse album is 1998’s Gallery of Suicide. It features current members George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher (vocals) and Pat O’Brien (guitar) and former member Jack Owen (guitar). Over the years, the band has had many line-up changes. The Corpse’s drummer (Paul Mazurkiewicz) and bass player (Alex Webster) are the two remaining original members.
Why do people listen to Cannibal Corpse? Here’s why (from the YouTube comments on the above).
Very nice! some gory bloody violent death metal to ease my ears after a long day of shitty lady gaga forced into my ears
Same here. Had to listen to fuckin Soulja Boi or whatever at school. “Majority rules”…fuckin BULLSHIT! THIS rules! \\m//
Cannibal Corpse—indisputably, one of the greatest death metal bands of all time.
Electorate Candidates for Mana
These are the candidates seeking your electorate vote.
Candidate Name Party Name FAAFOI, Kris Labour Party GOODE, Richard Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party LOGIE, Jan Green Party PARATA, Hekia National Party WARREN, Michael ACT New Zealand Party list for the 2011 General Election
Any list seats to which a party is entitled are filled from its list of candidates in the order they appear here, after deleting any candidates who have won electorate seats. Candidates who stand for an electorate seat only will not appear here.
EasyVote cards and packs were delivered to voters today. Because of this, I like to think that I’m “a household name”.
Three years ago, I was also an electorate candidate for Mana, and on the (Libertarianz) party list. Mid-afternoon, I strolled along to my nearest polling booth to vote for myself. At a trestle table inside St. Barnabas Church hall sat two or three officials with electoral rolls, rulers and pens. I approached and gave my details. The woman I was speaking to drew a line through my name and gave me my ballot papers.
“Richard Goode,” I said. “Recognise the name?”
“No.”
As the ALCP’s candidate for the Mana electorate, I was interviewed this morning by Nigel Hopkins (“the Rascal”) on Beach FM. I sang the praises of cannabis, God’s miracle plant.
The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party exists to legalise cannabis for recreational, spiritual, medicinal and industrial purposes; to empower people to work together for peace and true justice; and to institute a proper and just balance between the power of the state and the rights and dignity of the individual. We believe adults have the right to freedom of choice unless that choice harms other people or the planet.
I’ll post the interview soon. Apart from that, not much time for campaigning. Or blogging. Thank God for my co-blogger Tim who is taking up the slack!
How Ironic, The National Party actually had some good policy on their Bill boards! Unfortunately they were lies. This Bill board attack is typical Green modus opperandi. They are a bunch of Leninist Cretans whom practice his vile asertion that whatever actions serve ‘the party’ and world revolution… are ‘moral’. This is why they vandalise private property, and were caught throwing fire bombs and practicing ambushes with The Racist criminal Tama Iti.
For the few Hamilton West voters whom actually realise the justice and prudence of ‘Drilling it, Minning it, and selling it’… Vote Libertarian Independent Tim Wikiriwhi. They are exactly the sort of Free-market principles needed to grow our economy, create jobs and resolve our debt crisis. I would also Burn it, legalise it, abolish it, deregulate it, …
I received this by email and thought it was a valuable lesson on Socialism.
When the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Is this man truly a genius? Checked out and this is true…it DID happen!
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on)
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2011 elections.
These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Can you think of a reason for not sharing this? Neither could I.
I wrote this article in 2007 when I was the Libertarianz Spokesman on Drugs. It was published in the now defunct Free Radical magazine and has appeared elsewhere.
Vote Richard Goode for Mana and party vote Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party! Tick, tick.
Libertarianz Transitional Drug Policy
“The first casualty when war comes,” said Hiram Johnson, “is truth.” Indeed, truth was always a casualty in the now decades-long War on Drugs™. Debate on drug policy these days is characterised by disinformation and fear. Even the chemical arch-demon of our time, methamphetamine, or “P”, is far less dangerous than you have been led to believe. New Zealand’s drug czar, Jim Anderton, once described methamphetamine as “pure evil”. But the fact that in the U.S. methamphetamine, under the brand name Desoxyn®, is prescribed to children with attention deficit disorder, must give pause for thought.
Nonetheless, in a climate of disinformation and fear, Libertarianz drug policy – which is, basically, to legalise all drugs (yes, even “P”!) – is routinely met with horror and incredulity. The implementation of Libertarianz drug policy, absent the sky falling, is simply inconceivable to many people. This is why we need a transitional policy – not as a compromise proposal, but as an exit strategy for those currently pressing the War on Drugs™.
Libertarianz transitional drug policy is to legalise all drugs safer than alcohol. The motivation for this is the government’s own stated National Drug Policy: harm minimisation. Many people prefer drugs other than alcohol. Where those other drugs are safer than alcohol, the application of legal sanctions against the use of those alternatives is inconsistent with the principle of harm minimisation.
Libertarianz transitional drug policy is to legalise all drugs safer than alcohol, but the policy package contains a number of other measures. These include a moratorium on arrest for simple possession (or manufacture or importation for personal use) of any drug, and a downgrading of remaining penalties from the draconian to the merely harsh. (All drugs which remained illegal would be reclassified as Class C. This means, for example, that the maximum sentence for manufacture of methamphetamine would fall from life imprisonment to 8 years imprisonment.)
This policy is not, of course, the “tax and regulate” policy favoured by many drug law reformers, most often proposed as a model for the legalisation of cannabis. As legal products, drugs would be subject to any taxes, such as GST, which apply to goods and services in general, but would not attract any special taxes. In fact, part of the transitional policy package is to remove excise tax on alcohol, and reduce tobacco tax to a level where smokers pay for no more than their own health costs. Currently, it is estimated that tobacco smokers pay 3-4 times more in tobacco tax than it costs the public health system to treat their smoking related ailments. Thus, in line with a “user pays” philosophy, tobacco tax would be no more than a third what it is now, effectively halving the retail price of tobacco.
As for regulation, the only special regulation which would apply to newly legalised drugs would be an R18 age restriction on their sale – but this restriction would be properly enforced, as is meant to be the case with already legal drugs alcohol and tobacco. As with any other product, the sale of legal drugs would be subject to the provisions of existing legislation to protect the rights of the consumer, such as the Fair Trading Act 1986 and the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. For example, the packaging of legal drugs must not falsely state their ingredients, and the drugs themselves must be fit for their particular purpose. A manufacturer who claimed his drug gets you high when it only gives a nasty headache would be breaking the law.
Who would decide which drugs are safer than alcohol, and how would they decide? In a widely cited paper published in the Lancet earlier this year, David Nutt and colleagues showed that the UK’s classification of illegal recreational drugs into three categories of harm (similar to the ABC classification in our own Misuse of Drugs Act) is only modestly correlated with expert ratings of the drugs’ actual harms. They asked experts in psychiatry, pharmacology, and other drug-related specialties to (re-)rate a selection of 20 common recreational drugs on three major dimensions of harm: physical health effects, potential for dependence, and social harms. The experts, who showed reasonable levels of agreement in their ratings, ranked heroin, cocaine and pentobarbital as more harmful overall than alcohol, but ranked MDMA (“ecstasy”), cannabis, LSD, GHB (“fantasy”), methylphenidate (Ritalin®) and khat as less harmful overall. I mention this list for indicative purposes only. How to decide the dimensions of harm which ought to be considered and the relative weighting to be given to scores on those dimensions, and, consequently, the final ranking of drugs on the list according to overall harm is yet to be determined, but the methodology is sound. Ultimately, the decision would be left to the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs. For a change, the EACD would no longer determine how to classify new recreational drugs, but determine instead which existing recreational drugs to declassify. If their past performance is anything to go by, their judgements would err on the conservative side.
Libertarianz transitional drug policy is a partial implementation of Libertarianz drug policy. It is a step in the right direction, and potentially quite a big one, depending on how many drugs turn out, on assessment, to be safer than the drug of choice of most New Zealanders. Is it too big a step? Will it frighten the horses? To reassure even the most fearful, I propose a pilot of the Libertarianz transitional drug policy – to test the dihydrogen monoxide, as it were – which would run as follows.
Before legalising all drugs safer than alcohol, just two drugs safer than alcohol would be made widely available. One would be a mild stimulant and one a mild psychedelic (people who like depressants are fortunate in that a major representative of the class, alcohol, is already legal). Both drugs would be relatively safe, but might have some unwanted side effects which, to some extent, would serve to discourage widespread and/or excessive use. These two drugs would be made widely available for a period of, say, 3-5 years, after which time a “sunset” provision would come into effect and the trial would end. At this point, the social experiment would be assessed. Did the sky fall? Did hundreds die or spiral into addiction and crime? Was there more carnage on our roads and violence in our homes? Did the drugs ravage communities and destroy the futures of our young people? If the answer to these questions is yes, then we would conclude that legalising any more drugs conflicts with the principle of harm minimisation. But if life continued pretty much as normal, if society’s predicted descent into lawlessness and chaos failed to eventuate, if 400,000 New Zealanders consumed 20 million doses of these two drugs over the period in question with no lasting ill effects and no deaths, then the only rational conclusion to be drawn is that the experiment is a resounding vindication of Libertarianz transitional drug policy, immediately opening the door to legalising all other drugs safer than alcohol. This is an experiment we must try, and New Zealand’s legislators must be bound to act upon a favourable outcome by legalising a range of relatively safe substances for adult recreational use, for we have tried the alternative – total prohibition of almost every known recreational drug – and it is a failed, disgraced policy.
Libertarianz transitional drug policy is an important step, but only a step, towards full drug legalisation. Which brings us back to methamphetamine, because ultimately we would legalise “P”, too. So, what would happen if we legalised “P”? Those concerned by rampant methamphetamine use in this country must be brought to realise that the use of “P”, and other drugs with a high potential for harm, is widespread because of, not in spite of, criminal sanctions. The fact is that if all drugs were legalised, the use of methamphetamine and many other dubious and dangerous drugs would decline. If you like stimulants, why would you take methamphetamine if you could just as easily take 4-methylaminorex or organically grown khat? If you like empathogens, why would you take the potentially neurotoxic chemical MDMA (ecstasy) when you could just as easily take methylone (marketed for a short time as “Ease” by party pill creator Matt Bowden of Stargate International)? If psychedelics are your cup of tea, why mess with LSD (which causes permanent psychosis in a small minority of users) when the exotic delights of 5-MeO-DIPT and 2CI beckon?
Responsible adults who like drugs ought to have access to safe, effective and legal alternatives to alcohol. Libertarianz transitional drug policy would make this a reality.
Richard Goode
Libertarianz Spokesman on Drugs
Paul Holmes wrote an article which touched upon a subject I have recently been contemplating… The Brain Dead modus opperandi of the average voter.
Its here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/paul-holmes-on-new-zealand/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502869&objectid=10765413
It is titled ‘Phil Goff’s heartbreak – running in a race he knows he can’t win’
Here is the opening paragraph…
“The polling and the empty seats and the poor crowds of people over 90 years old must be breaking Phil Goff’s heart.
He’s been a loyal servant of the people for decades, and now the people are walking away from him.
I’ve written before about his ferocious capacity for hard work, which I witnessed once right through an all-day flight to Tokyo.
Head down in hundreds of pages of dense stuff, probably meaningless outside of the bureaucratic world but stuff he had to read and familiarise himself with.
That’s what politicians have to do: read endless screeds of boring stuff. But hard work alone doesn’t do it. Such is life.
You can talk about policy until you’re blue in the face, but in the end I wonder if people vote on policy. I don’t think they do. Most people don’t give a rats about policy. If we like the leader we vote for him.
When Holyoake was National leader, we voted for Holyoake. When Kirk came along we voted for Kirk. When Muldoon came along, we voted for Muldoon.
Rowling had a silly voice, so people continued to vote for Muldoon….”
Now I find those comments very interesting…very telling… about the dangers of unchecked Democracy…. Because it highlights the fact that Democracy in an unenlightened society… is fickle…. is Idiotic… and that it does not result in putting the best people, the most competent people in power. It shows one very important reason that the powers of Parliament must be kept to a minimum…constitutionally bound, so as to minimize the potential disaster that the elected morons and shysters can cause to the population they govern. Sadly no such restraints currently exist, and this is the primary reason successions of elected National and Labour governments have lead us into ruin.
In the past week I have talked to several people about the election and it is frightening to hear their voting Rationale.
One guy told me he was thinking of voting for the National Party’s Hamilton West candidate, Tim Macendo…. Not because he actually thinks hes been a good MP, but because in his word… “He’s the only hope of keeping Labour out of power.” Thus his electorate vote is being determined out of Fear of the Left. Now that is not necessarily an irrational fear, yet is that a proper/ wise way to Vote? He obviously thinks this is a clever strategy, yet I argue that such voting is not how one is supposed to use the electorate vote, that his argument is short sighted and a perversion of the two vote idea. It is actually very lazy because to caste a proper vote for your electorate ought to entail a thorough investigation of all the candidates and making the choice upon whom displays the most impressive character and values. That this type of ‘strategic thinking’ is very common, is one reason it is so hard for candidates from outside the ‘duopoly’ to get elected, even though they may indeed be by far the best candidate on offer. Punters will vote for the National party, or the Labour candidate irrespective of their competence.
This habit has not escaped the notice of unscrupulous Power trippers who seek to fast track themselves into Parliament. Knowing this weakness of the sheeple, they turn it to their own advantage. They will join the ranks of either National or Labour rather than any of the smaller parties…. Even if their true values better align with a minor party, because they know that by being in either of these two Parties almost guarantees they will make it into parliament within a few elections cycles. Thus these parties are filled with unscrupulous pragmatists whom would sell their Grandmothers into slavery for the sake of their own political ambitions. They are Political whores. They are prepared to actively work in opposition to minor parties that they actually believe to be right, yet choose to take a short cut into office and win personal power at the expense of their own moral convictions and principles. They are decievers.
Then you get the masses of People whom vote for their favorite Celebrity! Breakfast show hosts, Cooks, Gardeners, and Sportsman! In the Hamilton local body elections of 2007 television presenter Kay Gregory was the highest polling of all councillor candidates with 11,808 votes ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/16219/Simcock-back-down-to-business-today )
They elected her to council because they thought she was ‘Lovely’.
Several Blokes I have talked to recently say they’re going to vote for Sehai Orgrad (Labour party candidate for Hamilton West). Why? Because they think she’s ‘Hot’.
That Pisses me off! That they can be so callous as to vote for such a Nasty power tripper… consumed with her own self importance, simply because they fantasizes about ‘banging her’, is a frigging travesty! It’s a tragic example of how frivolously they choose whom will govern them, and shows plainly that many New Zealanders are unfit to participate in the democratic process. That is a ludicrous reason for deciding for whom to vote! Conversely not voting for a good and principled candidate because you think they are ‘ugly’ is equal Lunacy.
And The Media seem to think the same way. They are suckers for charisma and celebrity. An article appeared recently in the NZ Herald regarding a poll “Who was the sexiest candidate standing for election”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10765210
The lack of quality Political analysis and investigative journalism is a hallmark of the Major Media players, with very few exceptions. They are the lapdogs of the Status quo. It is almost impossible for outsiders to get their view herd in the mainstream media. This is a shameful betrayal of their moral obligations as Free press in a Democracy. Quite often the smaller Papers do a better job of informing the public about alternatives to the Satus Quo.
To think that some people are prepared to Damn our country to hell simply because they wanna vote for the Hot Demoness is a short skirt just goes to show how Democracy does not tend to deliver the highest caliber of Government, and how dangerous it is not to have constitutional restraints on Parliament! The truth is if we had a proper constitution which restricted the powers and spheres of operation of Government, this would reduce the risk to life and liberty posed by an elected Parliament of Cooks Rugby players and show girls.
We live in a Godless world that has lost faith in Principles. What is left that really matters?
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” Jesus Christ. John 8:44
Picture: Hitler, Goebbels, Hess.
“Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Jesus Christ. Mat 15vs14
In a Facebook response to my recent Blog post attacking anti-smoking Legislation, A young woman expressed support for the smoking ban in Bars, Pubs and Clubs, etc saying she believed it was right to Ban it from all ‘public areas’ and cited the passive smoking argument as vindication for her position. She said this was a subject she ‘felt very strongly about’.
Though I understand her reasoning and sympathise with her sentiments, I don’t accept her argument but see her comments as an example of the ‘conditioning’ that the Socialists running our country have ‘successfully’ engineered.
This is what I wish to talk about in this post. The dangers of State control of education, and their Massive Engines of Spin.
The Nanny state smoking bans are a product of Joseph Goebbels type mass mobocratic manipulation… of relentless Propaganda, which subtly undermines the boundaries between the jurisdiction of State power, and the Rights, liberties, and responsibilities of Individuals. It demonstrates the nature of creeping democratic tyranny accruing power unto itself and extending it’s spheres of authority and control… usurping dominion in what is properly the private sphere of personal Liberty and ethics, and trampling Private property rights under foot.
The state through the education system and an anti-smoking Ad campaign on TV and Radio, decried the ‘costs of smoking upon our society’, parading the so-called ‘victims of liberty’ across our screens…the Non-smoking Muso… the Bartender… thus ‘preparing the soil’, and ‘planting the seeds’, before they moved to impose their political ambitions upon us. Textbook Propaganda and Mass manipulation!
The Wolf often wears the garb of a sheep. The Pedophile often wears the garb of a Priest, and so it is that the Evil Socialist Bitch known as ‘Nanny State’ has cloaked herself in motherly apparel, spending gazillion$ convincing her victims that her tyranny is actually for our own good!
The Facebook response gave me pause to consider how successfully Nanny has ‘Educated’ the masses on the ‘Evils’ Smoking Cigarettes sufficiently enough to convince the majority to accept the government passing Laws which encroach upon private property rights. Of course this ‘Education’ conveniently leaves out any trace of Libertarian Enlightenment principles regarding the legitimate duties and limits of Government and The Inalienable rights and liberties of individuals! Thus What has not been taught is as fundamental to Nanny’s ‘success’ as what has been hammered home via propaganda. Seeing this stark contrast in what had been rigorously indoctrinated, and what has been completely swept under the mat I realised the great tragedy it was that this young woman had not been thoroughly taught how ‘Evil’ and unhealthy it is to have a cankerous government that does not respect Individual liberty, private property, Free enterprise, and Self responsibility!
If only our people had been ‘educated’ in the principles of justice to the same extent that they have been ‘educated’ about smoking cigarettes. Thus it is upon a sheepishly engineered ignorant population that The Socialist political parties of New Zealand have been able to pedal the lie that Private business, are ‘Public areas’/ pseudo Pubic property and thus con them into thinking the state can pass such legislation…without violation of private property rights!
I perceive that the socialists are allowed to pull off this fraud only because it suits the majority of sheeple . The nasty Hellbound deluded dunces in favour of this oppressive legislation.
Dr Goebbels would be impressed. Sheepish ignorance and Fascist complicity!
The socialists have manipulated the minds of the masses on many other topics too, justifying Big Government, oppression, and political favoritism. Eg The gross fabrications regarding the so-called breaches of the treaty by the invading British colonists, the so-called treaty settlements, and ‘First Nation’ status of Maori with special rights and privileges.
This is another travesty whereby indoctrinated lies are poured into a vacuum of unenlightened political ignorance.
This parallels with what Goebbels taught the Germans about the Jews, and we all know how that turned out!
Policy Statement 2011: As an Independent Libertarian standing in Hamilton West, If elected I would fight to repeal all laws which undermine legitimate private property rights, and would work to remove the State from Education and Health thereby reducing the States ability to indoctrinate the people with their filthy propaganda.
The Previous Blog post I mention is ‘Smokers have Rights’.
