Famously, mobster Al Capone was not laid low by other gangsters nor by criminal law -- but by the tax code.

He was strangled by bureaucratese. 

Tom Hunter suggests a Japanese-inspired idea to do the same for our local gangsters. And it starts with a humble McDonald's burger, for which a low-level thug wouldn't pay. Turns out something dramatic happened when McDonalds sued the Yakuza gang to which the thug belonged.

'That idea is captured in the dry phrase “employer liability.” In a normal company, if an employee injures someone while doing their job, the victim can often sue not only the individual, but the company and its representative director. The logic is simple: those who profit from dangerous activity should bear the risk of it. Japanese lawyers and police began asking: why should a crime syndicate be any different?'

Death by bureaucracy! Brilliant. What this meant was that all you had to prove was that the guy who had stolen, beaten or murdered someone worked for a Yakuza ..., which is exactly what McDonalds did with the thug.

Simple.

It started with a cheap burger. And is now at the point where the "boss of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang is losing his house (in a flash Tokyo district) because he lost a 270 million yen lawsuit against a firm that was damaged by one of his 'employees'.'

And here's Tom's thought:

Why couldn’t New Zealand copy these Japanese laws, or at least the conceptual principle of them, and apply them to the likes of the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, Head Hunters, and the rest?

Makes sense?

"If a group is intimidating the public, they can and should be arrested; no matter what they are wearing. If they are wearing patches and not threatening the public they should remain outside the reach of the law."

"At issue is a plan to ban gang insignia being worn in public ... A common complaint against similar laws is to ask the question; if the state is permitted to force known undesirables to change their clothes, what will stop them from forcing restrictions on the more respectable?
    "My position is more fundamental; the state should not be telling some of the worst members of our society what to wear because the state should not tell anyone what to wear. ...
    "Gangs are a form of power that operates outside the limitations we have attempted to impose on governments. ... I support most of the actions being taken to reduce their power, including membership being an aggravating feature at sentencing and non-association orders where there is some judicial oversight. Of course, being a libertarian columnist, I’d be delighted to see the end of drug prohibition, which is what gives these groups their economic power. ...
    "But I cannot bring myself to accept a ban on gang livery.
    "If a group is intimidating the public, they can and should be arrested; no matter what they are wearing. If they are wearing patches and not threatening the public they should remain outside the reach of the law.
    "It is intolerable to uphold the liberties that we expect for ourselves to those who would delight in our destruction. I do not deny this; nor the human desire bring these people to heel.
    "But because we can, does not mean we should ..."

~ Damien Grant, from his column ''The state should not tell anyone what to wear'

'Abusers Give Vice a Bad Name'

"The difference between me and normal observers: I don’t consider extreme abusers or 'addicts' to be victims. I consider them victimisers. They aren’t a symptom of a greater social problem. They are the greater social problem. Abusers have and continue to make evil choices. Granted, it logically possible to end up on Fentanyl Row through tremendously bad luck. Empirically, however, everything I’ve read on poverty convinces me that the root cause of such residence is almost invariably extraordinarily irresponsible behaviour. (Even a mild dose of the Success Sequence will keep you off the street: Read Adam Shephard’s 'Scratch Beginnings' for a blueprint.)
    "Abusers don’t just mistreat their families, friends, neighbours, and passersby. Even worse, they give vice a bad name."

~ Bryan Caplan from his post 'Abusers Give Vice a Bad Name'

"Prisons serve another purpose. They protect the public from dangerous people."

"Appalling crime story after appalling crime story gets reported. 
    "But media rarely report on the big decline in New Zealand's prison population.

Source: Department of Corrections: Prison Facts and Statistics, Sept. 2022

    "When Labour became government Kelvin Davis stated a goal of reducing the prison population and set about doing so. This is one policy goal they've actually achieved. But at what cost? ...

    "[A politician once] described ... prisons as a fiscal and moral failure. They certainly don't rehabilitate every inmate. They don't even come close. Far more needs to be done within prisons in that regard.
    "But prisons serve another purpose. They protect the public from dangerous people. That aspect of their place in society seems to have been overlooked in recent years."

~ Lindsay Mitchell, from her post 'NZ's rarely-reported plummeting prison population'

"A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defence

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights....
    "A 'right'… means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.... A crime is a violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud)... This provide[s] the only valid justification of a government and define[s] its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence....

    "The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defence. In a civilised society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initi­ate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physi­cal force a moral imperative.The nature of the laws proper to a free society and the source of its government's authority are both to be de­rived from the nature and purpose of a proper govern­ment.
    "A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defence....
    "Observe the basic principle governing justice ... : it is the principle that no man may obtain any values from others without the owners' consent­ and, as a corollary, that a man's rights may not be left at the mercy of the unilateral decision, the arbitrary choice, the irrationality, the whim of another man....
    "Such, in essence, is the proper purpose of a govern­ment: to make social existence possible to men, by pro­tecting the benefits and combating the evils which men can cause to one another...
    "The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physi­cal force and the protection of men's rights: the police, to protect men from criminals - the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders - the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws. ... [W]hat is essential here is the principle to be implemented: the principle that the purpose of law and of government is the protec­tion of individual rights.
    "Today, this principle is forgotten, ignored and evaded. The result is the present state of the world, with man­kind's retrogression to the lawlessness of absolutist tyran­ny, to the primitive savagery of rule by brute force."

~ Ayn Rand, composite quote from her essays 'The Nature of Government,' 'Man's Rights,' 'Galt's Speech,' and ''Political' Crimes'

"The purpose of a gang..."

"It has often been thought that by many who analyse gang membership that belonging to a gang offers young people the family experience that they have been deprived of.... If this were true, everyone who lives in an impoverished, decaying or otherwise brutal environment would join a gang....
    "The purpose of a gang is not to provide a stable, nurturing, caring, family environment. It is ... a group of warriors who ruthlessly pursue their objectives, and who readily dispense with anyone who betrays them. In the family of gangs, anyone is expendable."

          ~ Stanton Samenow, from his book Inside the Criminal Mind

“Rape culture”?

 

Protestors in Wellington today have “come out in force to denounce what they call rape culture,” says Newstalk ZB, demanding “the compulsory teaching of consent in all secondary schools.”

They may be on to something, but perhaps not precisely in the way they think they are.

Moral outrage is high, even as actual numbers of rapes have been diminishing. And not just here, but across the west. Writing at The Undercurrent, student journalist Josh Windham acknowledges that “rape and sexual assault are morally atrocious and profoundly evil. And the idea of a ‘rape culture’ does have its finger on an important issue: that this is a deep cultural problem which cannot be resolved easily by harsher penalties (or by louder protests).”

He argues that “the social factors identified by proponents of the ‘rape culture’ diagnosis are relatively superficial; to focus on them is to ignore the deeper causes of the rapist’s mentality””

Some feminists blame sexism. But while many rapes may be partially motivated by sexism, sexism is not the key element explaining their continued occurrence. There are plenty of sexists who would never dare commit the act of rape…
    It takes the mindset of a criminal to commit the act of rape—the attitude of someone with a one-track mind bent on satisfying his momentary whims, unconcerned with abstract hindrances like the “consent” of others. But why does consent matter?

This is the key, isn’t it. Consent acknowledges the fundamental human faculty of free will – respecting the sanctity of another individual – and clearly “consent is especially important to the value of sexual interaction.”

To rape is to deface a richly rewarding celebration of partnership and love. To rape is to mount another as unscrupulously and mindlessly as a dog would.

So why not teach consent in schools?

Well, why not talk about a culture of consent – and, crucially, understand that consent is fundamental to all human interaction, and its violation has become routine and widespread across the culture. If these students truly wish to discourage what they call a “rape culture,” let them truly understand the vital importance of consent in all human interactions:

Sadly, sexual interactions aren’t the only cases where our culture undervalues the importance of consent. Ask yourself whether you always consider the consent of others in your everyday life. Do you care about the consent of the musician when you download his music without payment? What about the consent of the t-shirt vendor who refuses to sell shirts with your design? Do you consider the consent of the baker when he denies you the cake you would like baked? How about the consent of the restaurant owner whose facility you storm in political protest? Do you care about my consent, when you vote to force me (and everybody else) to buy health insurance, whether I desire it or not?
    To be sure, rape is far worse—far more repugnant—than any of these offenses. But is it different in principle? The dorm-room rapist who bypasses the consent of his intoxicated victim is entirely unconcerned with his victim’s most intimate personal wishes—it’s his will that comes first. And just as the rapist trivialises the mind of his victim by taking command of a body not his own, so does the demonstrator who takes control of a space that isn’t his to occupy, interfering with the lives and careers of others who have the right to use it. The same is true for the healthcare-mandators, the cake-demanders, and even the illegal-downloaders: to one extent or another, their victims are treated as objects to be owned, used, and commanded. The reasoning of the perpetrator in each case is simple and vicious: “I feel like taking this. I’ll take it.”
    If we hope ever to succeed in the battle against sexual assault, it’s this cavalier attitude towards consent that we must fight. For if we consistently permit the use of force in society to run people’s entire lives, how can we possibly expect to be taken seriously when suddenly stressing the importance of consent in cases of non-violent sexual assault?
   The way to combat behaviour like sexual assault is not to speak out against a “rape culture,” but to advocate and foster a culture of consent—not just about sex, but in every area of life. Each of us as individuals must internalize and practice a sincere respect for the lives of others. This demands recognizing the sanctity of the sovereign mind, of the fact that others are not mere fodder for our whims, and that they can never be of value to us if treated as such.

“A culture of consent,” he correctly concludes, “respects the idea that my end does not justify the seizure of your means.”

Yes, let’s all try to understand that, please.

Let’s place consent above compulsion in all its forms.

 

[Pic from The Undercurrent, from creative commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Charlotte Cooper.]

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We have to talk about Sweden

 

There have been more modern fairy tales peddled about Sweden than even Hans Christian Andersen could dream up – and I don’t just mean whatever the American president thought he was talking about the other night.

The far-off place has become a convenient political talisman for the misinformed of both sides of the statist coin: both left and alt-right. The former insist that Sweden is that exception, a welfare state that doesn’t eat itself. The latter tell stories about “no-go zones” and “rapefugees.” Neither has much basis in fact.

The first myth is intended to tell the story that welfare-state socialism works better than markets. But, as Johan Norberg thoroughly and repeatedly demonstrates, Sweden's history in fact points to the opposite conclusion: that it was laissez-faire that delivered the riches, on which the looters are now feeding.

The second myth is supposed to tell us that immigrants and refugees are bad news, and Sweden’s crime statistics are supposed to show that. Politicians, commentators and internet trolls of the alt-right variety tell stories of crime exploding under a refugees engulf the country’s towns and cities, citing alleged crime statistics from fake think tanks showing, they say, that Sweden’s once-lovely places are now so teeming with these nasty people that rape has rocketed and violent crime has exploded.

Trouble is, that’s that not what actual Swedish criminologists citing actual Swedish crime statistics actually tell us. Is “the country's welcoming approach to refugees and its alleged effects on crime rates a warning sign”?

“Absolutely not,” said Felipe Estrada, a criminology professor at Stockholm University. His response was echoed Monday by multiple other experts who are familiar with Swedish crime statistics.
    Overall, Sweden's average crime rate has fallen in recent years, Estrada said. That drop has been observed for cases of lethal violence and for assaults, two of the most serious categories of crime.
    Moreover, an analysis by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, conducted between October 2015 and January 2016, came to the conclusion that refugees were responsible for only 1 percent of all incidents.

Clear enough.

Support also comes from “Germany, the other European country that took in similar numbers of refugees per capita in 2015.” Here also claims that the influx led to an increase in crime are unsupported by actual evidence.

“Immigrants are not more criminal than Germans,” an interior ministry spokesman said in June. Overall, crime levels in Germany declined over the first quarter of 2016, officials said last year.

So why, apart from the obvious reasons that rabid anti-immigration types might dream up rabid claims, does the myth persist? Say criminologists:

Reports about alleged police coverups of refugee crimes might have contributed to distrust in official statistics. Criminologists also say that a handful of cases have received disproportionate public attention, creating a distorted perception among Swedes.
    “What we’re hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a few isolated events,” Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University, told the ‘Globe and Mail’ newspaper in May, when coverage of refugee-related crimes reached a peak.

Read that line again: “Very extreme exaggeration based on a few isolated events.” Just part of the logical fallacy subsumed under the principle understood by the phrase “a picture is not an argument.”

There is however “one statistic in which Sweden does indeed lead international crime statistics, though: reported cases of rape.” So does this support the alt-right myth, then? No, say criminologists, only if you don’t understand (or don’t care to understand) how the statistics are gathered.

“The [definitions] of rape differ between countries,” Estrada said. “In Sweden, several changes in legislation have been made to include more cases of sexual crimes as rape cases.” Sweden's definition of what constitutes rape is now one of the world's most expansive. Varying figures, as well as other Swedish measures to facilitate rape complaints, might have affected statistics, as well.

This has been pointed out several times in the comments to my regular alt-rights trolls, so I have no expectation of any increase in understanding this time. But just understand when you do hear the claim that this would be just another form of the fake news the alt-right keyboard warriors claim to revile.

So what about these alleged no-go zones like Malmo? What about that then? Sorry, say criminologists, that too is another fairy tale.

Swedish crime experts also do not agree that immigrants have created so-called no-go areas in Sweden — areas that allegedly are too dangerous for native Swedes to enter and are effectively run by criminals. “This perception is fabricated,” Estrada said. But he and others pointed out that the refugee influx poses challenges to Sweden, just not in the way it is being portrayed by some.
    “Even [though] there are no 'no-go zones' as alleged in the propaganda, there are problems around crimes and disturbances in several suburbs of Swedish cities, where immigrant groups tend to be over-represented,” said Henrik Selin, director of intercultural dialogue at the Swedish Institute.

Just as you’d expect. We’re not talking utopias here, we’re talking about real places with real human problems – problems made harder, not better, by gross exaggeration.

Fascinatingly, an Alt-right editor has challenges journalists to visit Sweden to discover for themselves the facts he alleges about the place. Paul Joseph Watson (he’s the alt-right Brit conspiracy theorist who isn’t an apologist for paedophilia) has offered to personally stump up the fare for them to Malmo– an offer already taken up by one enthusiastic punter, and responded to by Malmo’s deputy mayor, who promises any and all visiting journalists a warm welcome and to go with them on any jaunts to the zones to which Mr Watson alleges they can’t go.

Sure, all is not well in Malmo, but neither is it the war zone alleged by the fetid fringe. “Seeing Scandinavia’s largest country, with its reputation for high living standards, good governance, and low crime, thrust into a sort of police line-up of multicultural Europe’s failures felt,” says Irishman Feargus O’Sullivan who’s already visited and researched the place for himself, “a bit like seeing your neighbour’s lovable pet guinea pig being ducked as a witch.”

Is there any truth in the accusations? The short answer is no. Malmö is actually a likable, easy-going kind of place. Facing Denmark and Copenhagen across the Oresund Strait (a distance spanned by a bridge since 2000), it’s a historic, faintly gruff port city of 342,000 residents—think Liverpool to Copenhagen’s Paris. Or to make an American comparison, an Oakland to the Danish capital’s San Francisco. By Scandinavian standards, it’s ethnically diverse, bustling, and ever so slightly unkempt. By the standards of just about anywhere lying southwards, however, its streets come across as trim, orderly, and, peaceful.
    Certainly, Malmö is a city whose urban (but not greater metropolitan) population has been substantially reshaped by immigration. A third of its population was born outside Sweden, with the largest groups coming from (in order) Iraq, Serbia, Denmark, and Poland. Rates of arrival have gone up in recent years. What hasn’t risen, however, is crime.
    In fact, Malmö’s violent crime figures would make the mayor of an average American big city weep with longing. With 12 murders in 2015 among a population of 342,000, Malmö’s murder rate is two thirds that of Western Europe’s real murder capital of Glasgow, and half that of Los Angeles. By contrast, Washington, D.C., has a murder rate almost seven times higher, while the rate in St. Louis, Missouri is just under 17 times higher. In relatively safe Sweden, those 12 murders are still cause for rightful alarm, but as this piece makes clear, Malmö’s crime figures aren’t just low compared to most American cities—they’re not even the highest in Sweden.

Read that sentence again, please: “Malmö’s crime figures aren’t just low compared to most American cities—they’re not even the highest in Sweden.”

So all is not utopic in the Scandinavian paradise, and journalists and the commentariat will continue to use its occasional incidents to cherrypick, but if this really is the best place anti-immigrationists can dredge up to support their argument, then they ain’t got one. And as far as intelligent debate about immigration goes, let’s (please) look at actual evidence, not the manufactured stuff of Machiavellian commentators and think tanks.

“Sweden definitely, like other countries, [faces] challenges when it comes to integration of immigrants into Swedish society, with lower levels of employment, tendencies of exclusion and also crime-related problems,” [Henrik Selin at the Swedish Institute concluded]. There is little evidence, however, that Sweden has turned into the lawless country it is at times being described as abroad.

[Quotes and pics from Washington Post, BBC News and City Lab]

.

“But when was the last time that the police needed to do raids, armed or otherwise, on a brewery or a distillery?”

 

The armed standoff in Kawerau began with a police raid on someone growing marijuana. A peaceful drug attracting violence only because it has been made illegal.

An armed standoff only begun because this harmless drug has been made illegal.

Meanwhile, while the police ride helicopters to pluck harmless leaves from the countryside, they manage to resolve only 10% of the burglaries inflicted upon New Zealanders – 164 unresolved burglaries a day -- not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. Why don’t they want to? Eric Crampton offers one reason: Priorities.

If it puzzles you that the New Zealand Police can find resources to run raids on marijuana growers, which sometimes turn into armed standoffs, but cannot find resources to solve burglaries, remember this:

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act enables police to seize assets believed to be the proceeds of crime, with or without a conviction.
Since it came into effect, $382 million worth of assets has been restrained (which means the police hold on to it during an investigation), while $85 million has been forfeited altogether. The funds recovered are used to fund law enforcement initiatives.
Police Minister Judith Collins says police have been “extremely successful” in investigating and seizing the “dirty money” of criminals and gangs since the legislation was introduced.
About 96% of forfeitures and 86% of restraints are linked to drugs and organised crime.

What profit is there in solving a home break-in? Anything you seize has to go back to the property's owners. But if you go after the folks who only commit victimless crimes, well, there's nobody who has to be compensated out of the seizures.
    I hate saying I told you so, but I did tell you so.
    The cops will tell us that the standoff's lesson is that police should be better armed. But when was the last time that the police needed to do raids, armed or otherwise, on a brewery or a distillery? Or on the Petone cigarette plant?
    The better lesson is that legalised markets are less violent and have less need for armed cops.

Update: Commenter Ben rightly notes that the funds don't go directly to the police. Here's the NZ Drug Foundation on that:

The lion’s share (70 percent) has gone to Police, Customs, Justice and Corrections. Health gets the rest.

Let Chris Brown in town [updated]

As Voltaire might have sung, “I disagree with what you auto-tune, but I defend to the death your right to do it in Auckland.” (If Auckland is where he’s booked to play; I have no idea, and even less interest.)

Anyway, Mark Hubbard makes the case “for letting Chris Brown in to perform his execrable music”:

It has nothing to do with Chris Brown.
    He has ‘done his time’ for his crimes. End of.
    After that, I don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding who can, and cannot, come into New Zealand. It has to be left up to the choice of the individuals of New Zealand whether they want to see, buy tickets, or whatever interaction they desire, with people such as Brown when they are in-country…
    Chris Brown must be free to bring his shite show to New Zealand, because if politicians [and, you know, the commentariat] get to choose who crosses our borders, New Zealand is not a free land and we all are living in Progressivestan.

Any questions? Because Mark has probably answered them.

UPDATE: Russell Brown appears for the prosecution.

We should begin by making clear exactly what Chris Brown did to Rihanna in 2009. He has not “been accused of being involved in violence against his partner” as Dame Tariana Turia bizarrely said yesterday. And his actions were not “considered only odious enough to warrant community service” as a hapless post on The Daily Blog claims. . . .

A Yankee in Middle Earth: Differences between US and NZ police

Our guest poster this morning, Monica Beth, observes her new New Zealand home through her native American eye.
Today:  Preliminary perspective on differences between US and NZ police.

I was stopped by a cop last night, and will recount the event at the end.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in a comment, but please read this before you do.

To be fair, a routine complaint I’ve seen here in NZ in several different places online is that police do not respond to crime fast enough, mostly theft. So the police here seem to err on the side of neglect rather than force, but it can often leave Kiwis feeling like the police do not have their backs when it comes to fighting crime. http://www.police.govt.nz/…/briefing-inc…/frontline-services

There are police scandals here in NZ (mostly involving either sex abuse or neglect of sex abuse claims). There will always be abuse of power anywhere you go. There is no such thing as a utopia. But in general, I would say there is a greater sense of and respect for bringing police to justice when they do wrong, as well as the requirement to change the law or establish oversight when the system is clearly not working. Take the example of these NZ cops who were fined heavily for attempting to blame a civilian for an accident they caused.

To wit, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA), established in 1989, is an independent body that considers complaints against the New Zealand Police and oversees their conduct.

Where can citizens in the US complain or appeal about police misconduct? (I confess I don't even know what the answer to this question is, or whether there is one.) Has anyone heard of a judge issuing a fine or a warning to a police officer in the US? Who polices the police?

Enforcement for traffic violations was something that was handed over to police in NZ in the 1980s, and the public has remained happy with it, but it's not something that has gone unexamined or unreviewed. Can you even imagine the concept of reviewing whether police should handle traffic offenses in the US, or whether those offenses should be handled by a different governmental authority?

The police in NZ have only recently been able to use tasers (I think since 2008), and guns are locked in the trunks of their cars. Naturally, this forces police toward a mentality of de-escalation. Arming cops with tasers has not been uncontroversial, and guns are not brought into the equation by police unless the person they are confronting is known to be armed and dangerous.

On average over the past 10 years, NZ police have killed 0.7 people per year in a country with a population around the same as Colorado. That yearly rate is more than 10 to 20 times that in Colorado, depending on the year.

Another telling historical fact. The word “force” to describe New Zealand’s "police force," was officially removed from the description in 1958.

Finally, contrast police recruitment in NZ (New Cops) with police recruitment in the US (NYPD, US Capital Police)

        

The contrast between their web pages is stark.

On the NZ page (above left), we have a smiling woman in her early 20s with untidy hair, with a focus on friendliness and preventing problems before they happen, with headings like, "A strong desire to help" and "No worries." When they say they “don't want cookie-cutter cops,” that they are looking for folks with different backgrounds, experiences and interests, working towards the same goal, who have empathy and ability to solve problems, it seems actually believable. Sure, all web pages are essentially marketing, but this matches what I see on the street here, where cops are often talking side by side on the street, standing with people they've pulled over, going over something on a clipboard.

On the US pages, I see un-smiling faces, postures of preparation bordering on aggression, and worded messages that convey "toughness, pride, honour, authority." I also perceive a combination with nationalism.

I see a lot of well-intentioned libertarian folks blaming police abuse on what they think are unique problems in America, such as the drug war. Conversely, conservatives blame "thuggishness" among ethnic minorities. Liberals blame racism.

But New Zealand also has drugs and it also has a lot of impoverished ethnic minorities. The prison population is higher among these ethnic groups in NZ also, and it's universally acknowledged and widely discussed. One could mistake that for racism.

I also see US libertarians blaming things like big government. But the NZ police have much wider search and arrest powers in NZ than they do in America.

I'm sympathetic to blaming "Big Gov" but I confess I see it as useless question-begging. The existence of the Fourth Amendment doesn't seem to be any protection from unwarranted search and seizure anymore.

How did that happen? And how do we get the government to obey its own laws that it's already supposed to be enforcing? By making more laws?

I propose there are three differences here.

1) A culture of politeness and empathy has been and is being lost in the US. There is a TV show here in NZ about cops, and when they pull people over their inflection rises at the end of a sentence, and they do such things as refer to the person as "mate." Almost complete lack of a punitive attitude. Perhaps it's because they're being filmed and feel they have to be on good behaviour, but the situations are amusing rather than highly alarming, despite revolving around alcohol and drugs. The people who they are pulling over are treated as a temporarily incapacitated danger to themselves and the public. The focus is on de-escalation, safety, and prevention.... not punishment, respect, and authority.

2) The police here are not automatically armed with lethal weapons. They are only allowed to pull these weapons out in certain conditions.

3) Police conduct is independently evaluated by a non-police governmental authority. The police are themselves policed.

Last night I was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. This was the first time I was stopped by police here, and I didn't really know what was going on, though I knew I'd eventually encounter a traffic stop as they are routine here. I rolled down my window and the policeman muttered something politely and held a machine toward my face. I said, "I'm sorry, what's going on? I'm new here and I've never done this before." He smiled and chuckled, pulled the machine away, explained that it was breath analysis, muttered something else, and then put the machine toward my face again. Kiwis can be difficult to understand because sometimes they speak quickly, I don't always understand the accent, and their vocal tone can be quite quiet in comparison to Americans. So again, I said confusedly, because I didn't understand what exactly I was supposed to do, "You want me to blow into this machine?" He laughed again. "No," he said. "All you need to do is count to ten." When I was done, he showed me the results. "No alcohol." And then checked my warrant of fitness (a safety inspection you need to get done on your car every 6-12 months), then smiled and said I was free to go.

Basically, I see America's current problems as primarily a result of out of control anger, outrage, entitlement, and oversensitivity on the part of everyone. I see so much anger in my feed these days. Angry, angry, angry. Feeeeelings, whoawhoawhoawhoa feeeeelings. People are mad at anything and everything. I don't even mean this primarily as criticism of others and not myself, because I have to continue to examine and check these attitudes in myself as well. (This extends way beyond law enforcement or anything to do with government at all.)

Ironically, I think what America needs most is to do something that's illegal to do, which is to sit down on the couch, all together at once, and collectively smoke a joint or take some quaaludes. Then, and only then, *after* it comes out of being happily stoned, maybe it can figure out how the hell to solve its problems.

---

Monica Beth is a new New Zealander from the States, a scientist trained to acute differences.
She is presently training her eye on the many differences between her country of birth and her new home.

SUMMER SECONDS: NOT in support of murder

“Summer Seconds” gives you a second chance to read classic posts from the NOT PC archives. This time, a piece from 2008 made more topical by the announcement over the summer break that the protagonist will very shortly be released from gaol, just fifteen months after having been sent there.

I must confess I'm disturbed by the many messages of support and sympathy I've seen around the place for the murderer of Pihema Cameron, a fifty-year old man who knifed the fifteen-year old for the offence of tagging his Manurewa fence.

This wasn't self-defence, for which he'd have my support. He didn't drag the young tagger from his fence and discipline him, for which he might have my sympathy. He didn't just chastise him, which he certainly deserved.

Instead he chased him three-hundred metres down the road and stabbed him through the heart. That's not self-defence—the only legal defence available to him. That looks more like murder.

For tagging his fence, he murdered him. Yet his supporters now say he should be let off.

I cannot even begin to understand how people who support law and order can also support murder.

Now I don't know the murdered youngster from a hole in the ground—which is where Pihema Cameron is now—but when I was his age I must confess to having tagged a building or two around South Auckland.

I'm not proud of it. It wasn't smart. But I grew up. Pihema Cameron never will.

I just don't understand how people can support his murder.

Murder. It’s still not O.K.

This is what leapt out of my newspaper this morning:

NZ HERALD: Hemmings' murderer had killed before
The man who murdered Good Samaritan Austin Hemmings in central Auckland spent eight years in an Australian jail for stabbing and killing his estranged girlfriend [and was then deported to NZ].
    He was also jailed in New Zealand on three separate occasions for knife [attacks] dating back to 1987…

Just think about that for a minute or two. A man who’d killed before and had been jailed before for knife attacks, all of them with the same sort of large kitchen knife with which he killed Austin Hemmings, was left by the courts out on the streets in Auckland ready to kill again.

Hmmm.

This is not the first time, is it. A long list of New Zealanders have been attacked killed and maimed by thugs who had a history, who were out on bail, out on parole, or who had killed before but had not been given the sentence their crime deserved.  Susan Couch, Tai Hobson and the families of Kylie Jones, Karl Kuckenbecker and many many other good people who deserved better can tell you the story.

The first duty of any responsible govt is to protect the rights, lives and liberties of its citizens. That’s its duty. That’s its job. This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.

The legitimate arms of government are there to protect innocent people from those, like Austin Hemmings’s killer, who think force is the means by which humans deal with one another. His killer had certainly given sufficient indication that’s how he felt—"when he gets enraged, he needs to vent his anger" the court heard yesterday—yet the last time he attacked someone with a knife, stabbing them in the stomach with a large kitchen knife and partially severing their thumbs (this was after he’d killed his girlfriend and been deported back here), he was jailed for just two years and four months.

Think about that for a moment, too.

Think about a courtroom in which a record of three savage knife attacks and a murder were read out, and the man responsible was put away for our safety only for two years and four months. Two years and four months … after which he was free to vent his anger again on anyone he felt like.

If the police, the law courts and the prisons are going to do their proper job—which is protecting the rights, liberties and lives of its citizens—if “justice” isn’t going to end up with the adjective “vigilant” in front of it—then they need to protect those who value their life, liberty, property and happiness from those who've shown beyond reasonable doubt that they're quite partial to taking them all away.  ("The rights of the accused are not a primary," points out philosopher Ayn Rand, "they are a consequence derived from a man’s inalienable, individual rights. A consequence cannot survive the destruction of its cause.") 

That's the only real reason to catch people and lock them up, isn't it—the only defensible reason.  Not to punish them, but to to protect us.

But it’s not happening, is it.

Mr Hemmings' brother Craig said last night that a man with Brown's convictions should not have been on the streets. "It would alarm any New Zealander and, I would think, any sensible person."

But after unrepentantly drawing gallons of blood and taking one life, this young man was out on the street to do it again.

Something’s wrong, isn’t it. The government is failing in the one thing they’re supposed to be doing—protecting our rights, lives and liberties.

But instead of walking the beat and policing laws already on the books, such as (off the top of my head) bans on carrying large kitchen knives, police instead spend too much their time collecting revenue from folk driving a few “k”s over an arbitrary speed limit, raiding hydroponic garden-supply shops, and harassing the 400,000 NZers who harmlessly smoke cannabis.

And instead of taking violent crime seriously, they give the highest prosecution rates to administrative (91 percent), dishonesty (86 percent), and drug offences (84 percent), crimes which neither pick our pockets nor break our bones; while violent crime—which does—has among the lowest prosecution rates, at just 16 percent. And sentencing for violent crimes has only recently begun to recognise that NZers don’t want violent criminals dumped out on the streets, they want them locked up safe inside. (Read the recent trends in the report Patterns in Police Apprehensions in New Zealand 2005/06 to 2008/09.)  And let’s not mention how many violent crimes are committed while the perpetrator is out on bail, or parole for an earlier attack.

Something’s wrong, it’s alarming, and any sensible person would know that.

* * * *

PS: I can’t help being reminded that the last time I discussed this I was savaged by Russell Brown for wanting “a policeman at every dinner table” for pointing out that so many convicted for violent crime are being kept on the taxpayers’ tab, and for assuming Austin Hemmings’s killer must have been before the courts before.

The man arrested by police was not on bail or parole and apparently has no history of drug abuse or mental illness [said Russell attacking my silliness]. But he is a sickness beneficiary, and for Cresswell -- deftly applying righteousness as the cement between correlation and causation -- that is proof enough that welfarism is to blame.
Maybe we will discover that the man has a criminal history, maybe not…

Maybe we will, Russell. Maybe we will.

Judith Collins. Making New Zealand less safe. [Update 2]

Why has the licensing of air gun owners suddenly been announced by this government?  Because of three shootings involving air guns.  Judith Collins reckons after these three shootings that we’ll all be safer if she passes a new law requiring all owners of air guns to get a license.

But will we really?

The man the police gunned down for defending his family’s West Auckland home against intruders—the armed police having failed to identify themselves before breaking in to question him--was holding a stolen air rifle.

The man who shot and killed Police Sergeant Don Wilkinson outside his Hain Ave, Mangere East, house with an air rifle--—the police having failed to identify themselves before going on his property as part of a drugs operation—was using a stolen air rifle.

Things might have been different in both these incidents if police hadn’t gone about their work by acting so like criminals themselves that they were easily confused for being intruders. But since both these incidents involved stolen guns and people quite happy to break other laws, it’s unlikely that either would have been any different because of Ms Collins’s knee-jerk law change. Criminals are unlikely to be slowed down because they haven’t got the right paperwork with them.

That’s also the case with the other tragic shooting in recent weeks involving an airgun.  Keith Kahi was shot and killed in a Botany Downs driveway. Shot by a man holding a high-powered airgun over what’s suggested involves drugs. But while being “pleased” the government is doing something, Keith’s older brother Derek still wonders if this law change is the “something” that should be done. “Since most criminals did not have firearms licences, he questioned what impact it would really have.”

It's the old saying: `Guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
    "The legislation might stop your average Joe Bloggs from going along and buying a lethal weapon. That's a good thing, but it's not going to stop the criminals out there, they'll find other ways."

Yes. They will.

Frankly, there’s nothing at all in Ms Collins’s proposed law change to suggest that either Don Wilkinson or Keith Kahi would still be alive if she’d been any quicker off the mark in jerking her knees. It’s simply foolish to pretend that criminals are going to start doing their paperwork simply because Judith Collins says they must. (And if she’s successful in licensing airgun owners, then what’s next: boys who own shanghais?) What her law might do, however, is to encourage owners of airguns who do become licensed owners to then head out and buy a real gun—or even several real guns, putting even more guns into circulation, in the hands of people who may not yet be ready to use them-- which is not exactly what she’s after, I’m sure.  A view confirmed by Petone gun shop owner John Howat, who says,

If you require someone to have a gun licence they will just go for that and never buy an air-gun, they'll go straight into real guns. It cuts out those learning steps out, which is the last thing you want to do."

If Ms Collins really wants to make New Zealand safer, she might contemplate the other link in the two fatal shootings that have encouraged her to spring into action. She should take the advice of Dr Richard McGrath after the recent shooting of two Christchurch policemen who (like Sergeant Don Wilkinson) were shot by occupants while invading their property as part of a drugs operation.

The elephant in the room is this: The escalation of violence occurred because the two officers involved had decided to investigate a house that smelled of cannabis. And handling cannabis is currently illegal. If the house smelt of incense or fried chicken, there would have been no reason for the policemen to try and execute a search of the house, and no reason for the occupants to fear visitors. It was the smell of an illegal substance that set the whole sorry train of events in motion.
    “The libertarian solution to what is essentially a non-problem (a house smelling of cannabis) is to legalise all acts of non-aggression—which includes adults making, selling and smoking dope. That is not to endorse the cannabis industry, but to remove it from the sphere of crime, where it simply does not belong. If cannabis handling was legal, talkback callers would not now be wringing their hands over bringing back the death penalty and allowing police officers to carry side-arms.”

Prohibition escalates violence in New Zealand just as much as it did in 1920s Chicago, and in Underbelly-era Australia. If she’s really serious about making New Zealand safer for everyone, including policemen, she’d be giving those facts some serious thought.

That’s if she is serious about safety, instead of just a populist headline.

UPDATE 1: The anatomy of a kneejerk:

[Pic taken from NZ Conservative]

 

UPDATE 2:  Keith Locke goes populist—calling for not just gun-owners to be licensed, but for every single firearm in the country to be registered—something that cost Canada $2 billion and still failed to achieve anything.  “Bad timing Mr Locke, on gun registration” says Stephen Franks.

Keith Locke's call for gun registration maintains the Greens' usual faith in government  It follows last week's Sunday Star Times 'expose' of how many firearms are circulating. But both come at a curious time.
    “Because New Zealand's law has just been praised  by the authors of an international survey of firearms law, and firearms murder rates. The Herald's story on that study knocks the stuffing out of the efforts of Mr Locke and the SST.
    “Sadly for  Taupo's Jeremy Graves a willingness to look at the law and the evidence together is still too much for the Police to handle…”

Read on here.

Nanny Joyce on camera [update 2]

The self-appointed nation’s nanny, Steven Joyce, today got his way forcing taxi drivers to install cameras in their cabs to, somehow, protect themselves against attack--and to increase by the cost of a cab ride, and the cost of entry to new cab-drivers.

Quite how a camera in a cab will protect tax-drivers against attack by numb nuts like the dangerous loon who killed Hiren Mohini in what seemed a spur-of-the moment attack—why a dangerous psychotic would pause in his frenzied attack for “fear” that it might be filmed--is a secret known only to Mr Joyce. 

But there was something he could have done which would have avoided intruding upon other’s business and at the same time actually done something to deter crime and protect drivers.  It’s a simple enough threesome:

1. Remove whatever privacy restrictions exist that bar cab-owners from installing their own cameras voluntarily.
2. Have police on the beat to deter the initiation of violence, and require prosecution of criminals for even minor crimes before they get on to bigger ones.  Broken windows, if you like.
3. Allow cab-drivers (and the owners of dairies and bottle stores) to defend themselves, and to possess, carry and use the means whereby they can.

This last is the most important. It is outrageous that people who provide these essential public services have to place themselves at risk of their lives to serve us. And even the most foolish lunatic is going to think twice if he knows his intended victim has the ability--and the legal backing—to end his attacker’s sorry life  instead of having his own terminated.

But I guess defending hard-working new New Zealanders (which describes most of the owners of cabs, dairies and bottle stores) is less important to Steven Joyce than another nannying headline.

UPDATE 1:  Looks like I’m not the only one saying this:

    Requiring all city cabs to have cameras, regardless of their circumstances, smacks of Nanny State."
    "Like many regulations, the scheme is 'one-size-fits-nobody'.  For example, cameras will be a pointless expense for drivers who only work during the day.  Where is a Treasury cost-benefit analysis when we need one?"
    "There is also the undiscussed issue of who is going to police the taxi drivers to ensure they have these compulsory cameras, check that they work correctly, and, of course, punish drivers who choose not to install them.  Will there be a list of approved cameras which have been vetted for reliability, image quality and carbon footprint?  All this bureaucratic nonsense is totally objectionable."
    "Libertarianz believes taxi drivers and taxi companies should be free to install cameras - or not - as they see fit.  This government decree is offensive to freedom and common sense."
Libertarianz spokesman Mr Howison also noted that taxi drivers, like dairy owners, should be free to defend themselves from attackers with reasonable force.”

As they should be.  The day they’re allowed to is the day attacks on them will either stop, or at least be rewarded with the appropriate response.

UPDATE 2: And there’s more. 

Paul Walker, Eric Crampton and Matt Nolan all attack the measure in different ways—Paul asking “why does Joyce think the government has to mandate anything? If taxi drivers want extra safety equipment do they not have all the incentive they need to install it?”; Matt saying “regulating for them to put cameras in is either pointless, or forces taxi drivers to do something where the cost exceeds the benefit – and so is suboptimal”; and Eric Crampton arguing it’s just an anti-competition measure whose real cost is hidden:

    The real cost of the soon-to-be-mandatory taxicab cameras won't be the 30-odd cents it adds to the cost of the typical cab ride.  Rather, it's the loss of surplus that will come when the World Cup hits in 2011 and jitney cabs will fail to come into the market because of the increased fixed cost of shifting your private car into taxi service.”

Make sure to read their various comments sections where they and their readers debate the real costs of Joyce’s intrusion.

A postcard to “Crusher” Collins [update 3]

Asset confiscation; suspension of your right to silence; expanded search and surveillance powers for an extraordinary range of government departments – I tell you what: I’m with Danyl here asking why is it that Minister for Police Judith Collins is so damn popular? And the country’s media so fawning?

Beats the hell out of me.

People say things like, “Oh, if you do nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear from expanded police powers.” What fatuous nonsense. That’s like saying if you’ve got nothing to hide then there’s no need to hang curtains on your front window.

Expanding the scope of “what-you-can-do-wrong” is just one way the state can make you feel its hot breath down your collar.  What they’re doing here is enlarging the scope of what they can do to you even if you’ve done nothing wrong at all.  Even if there’s no real proof of wrong-doing.  Even if there’s no chance of any conviction, or of any finding of guilt—the government and its agencies will soon be able to do a complete end run around the protection of the court system to search you, to surveil you, and to confiscate what you’ve got, merely on their say-so that you’re someone who’s not to be trusted.

As an opponent of enlarged state power myself, I’d like to think that all of us in that team would be thought of that way.  Which is just one very personal reason I’m outraged at the overturning of yet more fundamental legal rights going back centuries that this government is wasting no time overturning.  Presumption of innocence?  A criminal standard of proof? Just cause? Due process?

It’s almost like the Nats don’t even know or care, they exist . . .

“The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed.”  That’s a basic principle of Objective Law. What it’s being changed to by the Key Government is, to paraphase:

“The government’s retaliatory use of force will be unleashed to search for evidence that a crime has been committed, to deny your right to remain silent about any alleged crime in which you’re thought to have been involved, and to seize whatever assets the government deems to be forfeit from whomever they deem to be a suspect – under rules they’ll make up as they go along.”

Doesn’t sound like me to be praiseworthy.  Sounds to me more like something to fear.

Judith has already earned herself the moniker “Crusher,” despite not having crushed one car, and not looking likely to in the near future.  But she has already begun crushing some of your most basic protections against your being abused by the state and its multitude of agencies, quangoes and departments.

If you’re one of those who’s been thinking that HeadMistress Collins is doing good work here in making it “easier” to get to criminals, I would urge you to reconsider.  What she’s doing is making it easier to “get” the innocent, whether or not they’ve even displayed any criminality.

And if you can’t prove that someone is guilty in a properly established court of law, what gives you the moral authority to treat them as if you have?  Answers on a postcard, please.

UPDATE 1: No Right Turn spotted this chilling exchange on Sunday’s Q&A TV programme, on which HeadMistress Collins appeared:

"Paul Holmes pressed her on civil liberties, pointing out that the asset forfeiture regime was the end of "innocent until proven guilty". The Minister's response?

It's fantastic isn't it?

Yes, Really. We have a fascist as a police Minister.

It gets worse. What stops the police from abusing the vast new powers National (and, to be fair, Labour - because this bill and the Search and Surveillance Bill are both Goff's babies) has introduced? Apparently, the police are supposed to be concerned for their reputation, and afraid that they would "lose all credibility" if they victimised innocent people. Yeah, and I have a brewery in Mangitinoka to sell you. But Collins thinks we have other safeguards as well …  Lets look at those one by one, shall we?

Read on to watch NRT demolish them one by one.

UPDATE 2: Liberty Scott has more analysis in this post of The HeadMistress’s political populism and her gleeful evisceration of the burden of proof: Tough on crime, tough on rights.

UPDATE 3: And there’s this postcard from Scoop: Fascist Police States: Libz Habeas Collins' Corpus On A Spike

How NOT to get yo’ ass kicked by the police

Oswald spotted this object lesson by Chris Rock in how NOT to get your arse kicked the police.

Apparently there are still some residents of these shaky isles who are in need of such wholesome advice.

The four 'drivers of crime'

Another week, another local talkfest. Last Friday it was the 'Drivers of Crime' talk fest, which predictably produced "a rambling of predictable, ineffective hot air," said Libertarianz Social Welfare Spokesman Peter Osborne, but nothing at all that looked directly at those drivers.

And the talk fest ended with predictable calls for more govermment intervention, ignoring just as carefully as conference-goers had the elephant in the talk-fest's room: that it is existing government intervention that is the primary driver of crime.  Osborne notes the top four:

• Institutionalised welfare, particularly paying no-hopers to breed
• The government's factory schools, which promote illiteracy, deny children real knowledge, and block the growth of youthful independence
• The War on Drugs, which gives gangs an income
  
• No explicit right to self defence, which gives every NZer a 'kick me' sign that even criminals can read: "Come get me, I'm defenceless."
  

The first two created the underclass; the second two give them the freedom to pillage.

The problem of is simple: too little clear-eyed thinking, and too much Government Cheese:

Garrett continues to remove all doubt [updated]

ACT’s brave new MP David Garrett continues to defend the indefensible.  Still proudly defending his insistence that the already fairly toothless Bill of Rights Act be further emasculated to suit his view of the importance of individual rights -- “we've got too hung up on people's rights," maintains the “liberal” party’s most unlikely representative -– he’s now got his back even further to the wall, at Lindsay Mitchell’s blog, on the subject of the safety of prisoners. 

In defending his implicit assumption that there’s no one in our jails who are there only for victimless crimes, he makes this explicit challenge to Mike Earley,

if you can draw my attention to anyone who is in jail for "smoking pot" and nothing else, $100 is yours...

Looks like he is as foolish as he is ill-informed. Quick as a flash, Mike obliges.

One begins to realise the beauty of Keith Holyoake’s advice to new MPs to breath through their nose for their first three years.  And also, perhaps, of Mark Twain’s valuable advice to fools.

UPDATE: Liberty Scott clarifies the problem with Mr Garrett’s position:

    It is one thing to say prison shouldn't be comfortable - which is right, it shouldn't have TV, videos and the like. Similarly the smuggling of drugs and cellphones should be stamped upon.
    It is another to be nonchalant about prisoners being raped.
   So now [from the ACT Party and its supporters] we have that it's okay for people to be in prison for growing cannabis for personal use, okay to be in prison for sedition, presumably also for inciting racial disharmony (three months sentence), tax evaders of course, blasphemy can have a prison term (though been a long time since used), as can consensual adults-only incest, as can possession of an erotic story involving consenting adults. . .
    How fucking hard would it be for ACT to, in principle, oppose victimless crimes, while at the same time recognising that some victimless crimes need to be addressed comprehensively. . .  ?

Obviously, no government will be conveniently keeping figures on how many they have incarcerated for victimless crimes, but when I last looked at this question NORML were pointing out that "New Zealand has the highest recorded cannabis arrest rate in the world, at 606 people arrested per 100,000 population per year. The United States is second with 247 arrests per 100,000 population per year."
Not a great statistic in which to come first. NORML's Cannabis Arrest-o-Meter shows too that there have been 123,303 cannabis offences [from 1000 to 2006] and that cannabis offences number just over 80% of all drug offences. So that's an awful lot of victimless arrests.

    As for the prison population ... if you check the recent NZ Corrections Dept stats ... of 6,250 prisoners (costing taxpayers $56,575 per year) they suggest upwards of nine percent of male offenders are incarcerated for drug offences, and eight percent for traffic offences.
    "The main reasons [given] for male imprisonment are: 39 percent for violence offences; 22 percent for sexual violence offences; 22 for property offences (e.g. burglary), 9 percent for drug offences; 8 percent for traffic offences."  Yes, traffic offences.

Meanwhile, Blair Anderson from the Mild Greens has some more recent figures:

Drug offences rose slightly between 2007 and 2008 from 18,908 in 2007 (year ending 30 June) to 19,259 in 2008. Within this overall rise there was a shift in the composition of these offences with more Cannabis related offences (14,449 to 15,288) and fewer offences for other and most often harder, drugs (4,450 to 3,971). Overall the level of drug related crime is 13% lower in 2008 than in 2004 when there were 22,249 drug offences of which 18,271 were Cannabis related.

And Lindsay Mitchell follows up on the point this morning:

First I reiterate a part of a post from earlier in the week;
    "’ The fact is: if you don't want to be assaulted - or worse - by a cellmate, avoid prison by not     committing a crime,’ Mr Garrett said."
My response; 
    “I wonder if Mr Garrett has forgotten that there are people in our prisons who are not violent; people who are guilty only of victimless crimes; people who should properly be in the care of psychiatrists and nursing staff; people who are on remand awaiting trial who may not even be convicted. . .”

And as always, Lindsay likes to base her own case on the figures, and Chris Fowlie at NORML has supplied Lindsay with some numbers from the 2002 Health Select Committee cannabis inquiry report:

p32: "Of the 9,399 prosecutions for the use of cannabis, 6,761 resulted in convictions, and 52 custodial sentences were imposed."

And from parliamentary questions:

Question 8479 (2004) … Paul Swain (Minister of Corrections):
The total number of inmates imprisoned for possession of drugs but not manufacture or supply of drugs in each of the last five years is as follow:
1999 431 inmates
2000 430 inmates
2001 443 inmates
2002 386 inmates
2003 411 inmates
2004 157 inmates (up to 31 May 2004)

As Lindsay says, “While most sentences would have been for drugs other than cannabis, these substantial numbers represent the victimless crimes alluded to.” 

These are just some of the people Mr Garrett and his ACT Party wish to ignore.

And he still owes Mike $100.