Bend it like Mike Lee [updated]

A question for you this morning: What’s the difference between soccer player David Beckham and Auckland Regional Council head honcho Mike Lee?

In truth, there’s many differences -– from athleticism to talent to the number of Oscar-winning films with their name in the title –– not to mention the length of their wives’ skirts -- but there’s one particular difference thrown up over the weekend:

David Beckham has made a fairly large fortune playing a game that millions around the world want to see, a fortune his wife has no trouble spending.

Whereas Mike Lee just threw away a small fortune promoting a soccer game at Auckland’s Mt Smart with David Beckham that only 16,000 Aucklanders wanted to see -- around 4000 too few to make back the money Lee spent on the game – and the money he just threw away was yours and mine.

In other words: This wasn’t an entrepreneur risking his own money on a dubious promotion; it was a local-body politician spending your money so he could pretend to be an entrepreneur -– money that Mrs Beckham will have no trouble spending down Rodeo Drive.

So where does Mike Lee get the power to throw your money away like this?  To answer that, you only have to go back to 2002, when then Local Government Minister Sandra Lee (no relation AFAIK) revised the Local Government Act to gift councils "a power of general competence" – and who in their right mind would use the words “competence” and “council” without the intervening words “lack thereof” – so that councillors could legally do whatever the hell they like with your money.

And they have. This game presents in microcosm the reason the rates you pay on your property are so bloody huge while the things you’re allowed to do with your own land is such a bloody small list. 

In essence (as I said at the time) what Lee’s Act overturned was a crucial constitutional principle -- the principle that citizens may do whatever they wish apart from what is specifically outlawed, whereas governments and councils may only do what is specifically legislated for.

The main purpose of this constitutional principle is to keep a leash on government, both central and local.  You may judge from your own rates bill what removing this leash has done.

But we now have a new Minister of Local Government, and to remove the “power of general competence [sic]” would be the easiest thing in the world for that new minister.  If Rodney Hide – for it is he of whom I speak -- wants to knock off an easy and urgent target, this would be one of the easiest and most urgent.  He could do worse than refer to Libertarianz’ submission to Sandra Lee’s 2001 bill to see where to cut.

It would be as easy as Mrs Beckham spending money.

UPDATE:   Rodney Mayor Penny Webster is another local-body blowhard who needs a rocket up her fiscal arse.  Councils must “be prudent” in tough times says the woman who’s presided over enormous rate increases in the Rodney district, “but this shouldn't entail pruning.”  Well, Penny, yes it bloody should. In case you haven’t noticed, those people whom you and your ilk view as cash cows are struggling under the cloud of a coming depression.  They’re struggling to pay their bills, and they fully expect you to take “a slash-and-burn approach” to your bloated, flatulent council – a council that has levied rate increases every year for six years (2007/8 rates in Rodney lifted again by up to 12% for properties and 14% for sections) on the back of RDC salary levels rising 116% in the 5 years to 2006, even as fulltime staff numbers increased from 249 to 450.

So yes, Ms Webster, prudent really does mean slash and burn.  How about you give your bloody ratepayers a break -– you could start by taking those staff numbers back to what they were five years ago, and getting rid of all the expensive make-work nonsense those overpaid, unemployable clipboard wielding blowhards have been doing.  And then apologise for being an apologist for bloat, and resign.

Time for an Olympian razor

I"ve been thrilled by the outstanding performances of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps; I've enjoyed every medal every New Zealand Olympian has won; and I've savoured the new Olympic sports added to the programme like triathlon and marathon swimming.

That said, I don't care two hoots what happens to New Zealand's two BMX riders going for gold this afternoon. I couldn't care less, because BMX riding is simply not an Olympic sport.

I was talking about this yesterday with CP, discussing why their success or otherwise means nothing to me, and she reckoned it's not just a matter of tradition that means sports like soccer and tennis, and BMX and beach volleyball shouldn't be at the Olympics -- and it's not just because they're demonstrably silly that so-called sports like synchronised bloody swimming should be sent packing forthwith -- it's that the essence of Olympic sport is that it highlights perfection in the essentials of every sport.

Genuine Olympic sports, she argued, are the abstracted elements of sport -- you can run and jump and leap around playing soccer, for example (and if you're good enough you can do it on a world stage in its own right), but only at the Olympics are the essential elements of running fast, jumping high and leaping around gymnastically abstracted from all other sports, and the world spotlight shone upon the champions in these fields.

I suspect she's on to something here, that real Olympic sports are genuinely Olympian in their abstraction. At the Olympics, we thrill to the sight of the world's fastest man (and wasn't he outstanding!), as we should.

This is clearly an order of abstraction higher and more Olympian than the thrill of seeing a chap bending a soccer ball around a wall of defending players (and I apologise sincerely to readers for any confusion I may cause by using the word 'abstraction' in the same sentence as a reference to David Beckham), or kicking said ball to each other for ninety minutes. If she's right, then the more abstract the sporting feat, the stronger are the grounds for its Olympic inclusion; and the more specific it is, the more the grounds for exclusion.

If she is right, and I think she is, then we can formulate a new 'epistemological razor' by which to ensure the Olympic are restricted to their essential sports, and not multiplied beyond necessity.

Athletics, for example, contains the abstract elements of most sports, and is therefore the core of the Olympics -- as are sports that involve shooting things, throwing things, leaping over things, punching other people while they try to punch you back, and lifting heavy weights. And cycling, for all it looks like it might be too specific, is basically about riding things fast -- the abstracted essence of the means by which human-powered machinery can be made to go fast -- so that has to be there too.

But BMX cycling? That's just too specific, and therefore far too un-Olympian.

That said, I do of course wish New Zealand's two BMX Olympians every success, but I trust they'll forgive me if I don't tune in to hear how they got on. After all, if we come to accept sports like BMX and synchronised bloody swimming as part of the canon of Olympic sports, then come 2012 and the London Olympics we'll be seeing arguments from the English that pub sports like snooker and darts must be included.

And down that way, madness surely lies.

A weekend ramble through religion, history, illiteracy and Wikipedia... and more. Enjoy!

Another Saturday morning ramble through links, sites and titbits that caught my eye over the last week as I waded through the interweb.

• The US Center for Public Policy Research is turning Greenpeace's insistence on climate skeptic organisations revealing their funding back on Greenpeace, "challenging Greenpeace and its affiliates to disclose the sources and amounts of its 2006 donations exceeding $50,000," and revealing some of those donors.
  

  Greenpeace - perhaps based on its own behavior - assumes that donations influence the stands groups such as ours take. They do not. So that the public can judge for themselves, we're challenging Greenpeace to complete transparency through disclosure of major gifts... If Greenpeace expects its call for public disclosure of grants of other groups to be taken seriously, they should lead by example. If not, they're the real "denial industry."

  If Greenpeace agrees, says The Center, then they will do the same. See Think Tank Challenges Greenpeace to Meet Transparency Standards.
  
  
• John Stossel makes a point, which as usual is a point worth making:

  Whenever someone is hurt in an accident, people say, "There ought to be a law!" Politicians rush to oblige them and then take credit for all the lives they saved. But shouldn't they also accept blame for the lives lost because of those laws?

  Lives lost? Yes. A joint study by the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute found that government regulations that are supposed to save lives actually end up killing more people. Why? Because safety laws almost always have unintended bad consequences.

  See John Stossel: Hazardous Safety Regulation.
  
  
• Hate Crime. Ed Cline has the real oil on so called "hate crimes," and here's the nub:

  The first and most crucial thing to grasp about what can be deemed a “hate crime” is that it is, essentially, a political crime.

  He's right you know. Read Ed Cline: The Genesis of Thought Crime.
  
  
• And read Ed too on Jamestown -- the first successful American colonial outpost -- and Why Jamestown Matters,.a letter correcting a politically correct account of the colony that appeared in a national newspaper. As you'll see, Ed's account has relevance both to New Zealand colonisation, and to recent arguments about politics and religion. Historian Eric Daniels fleshes out Ed's response in a more detailed exposition of the Jamestown colony. Jamestown, he says, was The Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal.
  
  
• David Bain is the new David Beckham, or so you would think from all the media coverage he's received this week. When will he be on Dancing With the Stars? Notes the Kiwi Pundit,

  The 'miscarriage of justice' referred to in the [Privy Council] decision is not that the verdict was likely to be wrong. The point is that justice requires that the defendant be convicted by a jury that has seen all the evidence. The Bain jury didn't see all the evidence, therefore there is a miscarriage of justice. There is no inference that the jury would have, or should have, decided the case differently based on the new evidence.

  It's too easy to forget that David Bain is still a suspect -- one of only two suspects in a multiple murder -- and as such he needs a proper trial to either clear his name or determine his guilt. Guilt in this case should be easier to prove than in many other cases, since there are only two suspects, and for the other one to have "done it," then you have to be able to show that he subsequently suicided -- a difficult job by all accounts. Meanwhile, Falufulu Fisi reminds us of the leading evidence against David Bain in this comment.
  
  
• Increasing illiteracy is not unique to the products of NZ's factory schools -- it's a worldwide failure due to the signal failure of a leading literacy theory, the stupid "whole language" method of not teaching reading -- a method that "teaches children to memorize and guess at words, using pictures and other clues, instead of using phonics skills to sound them out." It's worth reminding ourselves that "the experts" responsible for this abject failure still rule the roost at the world's teachers' colleges, pumping out new teachers to teach illiteracy to new generations of students every year.
  
  Martha Brown names names in this article, pointing out some of those responsible for both introducing and maintaining a method of teaching that has ensured that in New Zealand a staggering 66.4 percent of Mäori were below the minimum level of “ability to understand and use information from text,”and an equally tragic 41.6 percent of non-Mäori, and "that the United States, like Haiti, is among the seven out of 39 Western Hemisphere nations entering the third millennium with a literacy rate below 80 percent."
  
  Why do we face this elementary problem? Read Brown's Poor Reading-Instruction Methods Keep Many Students Illiterate to begin finding out, and to see what part "NZ's own" Marie Clay has to play in the whole scam. Have a look at this local page for a brief introduction to the difference between whole word, whole language and phonics, and read some of Patrick Goff's articles at this index to get some of idea of how phonics really does works for reading. Brown's conclusion is worth quoting in full. Explaining why Marie Clay's Reading Recovery programme still continues despite both research and practical experience of failure that discredits it, she concludes:

  Writing separately, [literacy researchers] Groff and Lyon both speak of poor teacher preparation and (in Lyon's words) of "the tendency for educational practices and policies to be guided by philosophical and ideological factors rather than scientific factors." Groff notes educators' ignorance and distrust of "what experimental research actually indicates about reading instruction."
  
  He adds, "There has been no easy or regular accommodation for grievances from the courts for the malpractice in reading instruction that has taken place. The monopoly over teacher education that is now held by university departments of education has allowed them to train reading teachers wrongly with impunity. Ideology about reading teaching thrives in this hothouse of irrationality."

  Burning down the teachers' colleges is long overdue.
  

• While Syrian and Iranian sponsored terrorists are blowing up people in Iraq and Israel, Condoleeza Rice looked the other way and went to the Middle East to talk to those who train, arm and supply the terrorists. What did she think she was doing? According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute,

  Talking will not convince the Iranian theocrats to give up their support for terrorism and their feverish quest for nuclear weapons. Quite to the contrary, any such 'dialogue' will only demonstrate America's weakness and encourage the Iranians to sponsor even more terrorism, especially against Americans in Iraq.

  He's right, isn't he. When one side is saying "Death to America!" and America responds by "seeking dialogue," aren't you just inviting more of the same? See Yaron Brook: Iran Sponsors Terrorism, US Seeks Dialogue.

• In fact, when it comes to the threat of Islamic Totalitarianism, as John Lewis says There is No Substitute For Victory. Hear Lewis make the argument in a controversial presentation at George Mason University: a link page is here. (And here, just to remind you, is his fantastic article on the same topic.)
  
  
• But surely the threat of Islamic Totalitarianism isn't a real threat, I hear some of you say? This isn't a real war? Well, perhaps you need to understand a different way to declare war. In the modern world with only one major superpower, there is more than one way to declare war. James Joyner lays out in detail the reality of so-called Fourth Generation War, a new kind of war in which we are presently engaged, and which is as difficult to fight as it is for many people to identify.
  

  We now face a foe that cannot be defeated with a few guided missiles, smart bombs, or shock and awe. We’re not simply fighting “terror” or “terrorists,” but, as Barnett puts it, “those who want to isolate large chunks of humanity.” These people are, quite literally, enemies of freedom and of its underlying values. The global economy, its rules, and its attendant culture threaten their way of life, and they will stop at nothing to cut themselves off from the reach of Western values.

  The good news is that this enemy doesn’t have the ability that the Soviet Union had to wipe out the planet. The bad news is that this enemy may be harder to defeat. And remember: the Cold War lasted more than forty years.

• But isn't it easier to just put your head in the sand about the threat and just blame others for imagined vices? Well, maybe. It's certainly something that's going around. In fact, there's even a leading psychiatrist who's identified it as a syndrome. University of Michigan psychiatrist Pat Santy suggests that the phenomenon of "displacement" is at work.

  Displacement is the separation of an emotion from its real object and its redirection toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid having to deal directly with what is frightening or threatening...
  [
  This pyschological manouever disguises obvious self-delusion or self-deception]: It is, for example, behind most of the more vicious attacks on President Bush for anything he does; and for anything he doesn't do. He is behind every evil like some modern-day Moriarity, a criminal and godlike genius who is simultaneously a moron and incompetent. We are not talking about a mere dislike of the President; nor is this simply "politics as usual". Rather, it is an unreasoning and implacable, visceral hatred of George W. Bush for the sin of existing.
  

  Visit "Dr Sanity" here: More Displacement, Less Reality. [Hat tip Orson at SOLO]
  
  
• Meanwhile, Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame has news of what looks to be a fabulous book by Czech president Vaclav Klaus, Blue , Not Green Planet -- including a great interview and reaction from climatologists. Klaus views the environmental movement and specifically the global warming hysteria as a Green "revolt of mobs." From the interview (translated from the Czech):

  Could you please tell our readers who obviously haven't yet read your book why you wrote it?
  Because I am very worried about some people's far-reaching attempts to reconstruct the world and revolutionize the behavior of the society. These people use some highly questionable data and hypotheses to deduce what is happening today and what will be happening in the world. And I view it as a threat for freedom... this issue has the capacity to mobilize larger groups of people: that's why I say that environmentalists are able to initiate a "revolt of the mobs".
  
  This topic is likeable and understandable for most people. Catastrophes are always sold well and the extrapolated catastrophicity is now even higher than it used to be in the context of Marx. I don't think that the goal of these people is to reduce freedom deliberately. When I am going to talk to Al Gore, he will deny it. But I insist that what he proposes does suppress freedom. And it is sad he is not thinking about the consequences.
  

• I've just discovered and enjoyed a 2005 speech from Alan Greenspan, a quick walk through American economic history of the last two-hundred years, concluding with hs view of the health and resilience of the contemporary economy, which is changed fundamentally he argues by the ability of crucially important price signals to be disseminated so rapidly by your new information systems, and by a new flexibility in the economic system. It's worth quoting a substantial part of it since it explains the value of economic freedom so succinctly:
  

  Whether by intention or by happenstance, many, if not most, governments in recent decades have been relying more and more on the forces of the marketplace and reducing their intervention in market outcomes. We appear to be revisiting Adam Smith's notion that the more flexible an economy, the greater its ability to self-correct after inevitable, often unanticipated disturbances. That greater tendency toward self-correction has made the cyclical stability of the economy less dependent on the actions of macroeconomic policymakers, whose responses often have come too late or have been misguided.

  It is important to remember that most adjustment of a market imbalance is well under way before the imbalance becomes widely identified as a problem. Individual prices, exchange rates, and interest rates, adjust incrementally in real time to restore balance. In contrast, administrative or policy actions that await clear evidence of imbalance are of necessity late.

  Being able to rely on markets to do the heavy lifting of adjustment is an exceptionally valuable policy asset. The impressive performance of the U.S. economy over the past couple of decades, despite shocks that in the past would have surely produced marked economic contraction, offers the clearest evidence of the benefits of increased market flexibility....
  Most recently, the flexibility of our market-driven economy has allowed us, thus far, to weather reasonably well the steep rise in spot and futures prices for oil and natural gas that we have experienced over the past two years. The consequence has been a far more stable economy.

  Flexibility is most readily achieved by fostering an environment of maximum competition. A key element in creating this environment is flexible labor markets. Many working people, regrettably, equate labor market flexibility with job insecurity.

  Despite that perception, flexible labor policies appear to promote job creation, not destroy it...Although the business cycle has not disappeared, flexibility has made the economy more resilient to shocks and more stable overall during the past couple of decades.

  Read the whole speech, starting here: Alan Greenspan speech, Oct 12, 2005.
  
  
• As many readers will know, Alan Greenspan was an enthusiastic admirer of Ayn Rand. Which links nicely to this post at the Leitmotif blog, answering this question: Why is Ayn Rand Respected More in India?

  Ayn Rand is rather well-known in India, though of course not as widely known as she is in the US; however, it can be argued that Rand is certainly viewed more respectfully and with admiration here in India than in the US.

  The reasons for that are probably not quite straightforward: it’s not just because Rand’s reputation in India has escaped the lies, mischaracterizations, and attacks of the intellectual and academic elite in the US...
  

  And one might say the same of the lies, mischaracterisations, and attacks of the intellectual and academic elite here in New Zealand. One might, but one wouldn't.

  In my opinion, the main reason for this is that the Indian people who read her actually understand the truth of her arguments, for the most part. Because Indians live in the collectivist, pseudo-statist, tradition-bound, mystic society that India is, the readers grasp the validity of Rand’s ferocious criticisms of these states and agree with her description of life under these conditions.

• Speaking of Rand, if you've never seen her sparkling appearances on the Phil Donahue Show in the last decade of her life, then you should. YouTube has them, starting here: Ayn Rand - Donahue Interview (Part 1).
  
  
• "Powdergate." Like a zombie emerging from our dark pre-1984 past, the recent trial of business executives for selling milk powder -- a product over which the government had decreed that the Dairy Board should hold a monopoly -- serves as a reminder that the gains and economic freedoms so well addressed in Alan Greenspan's speech above should not be taken for granted. Our Muldoonist past is not so far away.
  

• What about them Scientologists, huh? Yeah, they're fruit cakes for sure, but Alexander Cockburn argues they're no more nuts than are most religious fruitcakes.

  There’s probably more psychic oppression in every ten seconds of the life of the Roman Catholic Church (or — let’s be ecumenical — the Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists) than in the career of the Scientologists since L. Ron Hubbard got them launched. Last time I heard, the Vatican (which has to OK every deal) was settling sex abuse cases against priests in the U.S. at about $1 million per.

  He points to the dangers of the political demonisation of religionists. (Think Exclusive Brethren.) See Alexander Cockburn: Scientologists Take Offense in Reich Land. As always, this blog will continue to personally demonise religionists insead.
  

• "Why is it okay to make fun of Christians but not Muslims?" asks Jim Woods. Well, he says for a start, "every adult that talks to their imaginary friends are either a prime candidate to be the object of humor, or institutionalized if they are a direct physical danger to themselves or others. "

  This includes Muslims, Christians, and all other devoted followers of the Invisible Sky Daddy. Fortunately, it generally isn’t necessary to make the effort to make up jokes about them as they do that themselves when they open their mouths.

  Making fun of people who actually respond verbally to your ribbing is always far more fun than making fun of people who blow up your transport.

  In addition, especially outside of this country, Muslims live in cultures where Aristotle is now completely absent. To find something similar in this country you would have to go to a Protestant church or a university faculty lounge. No wonder they act illogically, they don’t even know that logic was invented. Humor would go right over their heads; non-contradiction, what is that?

• The danger of mixing politics and religion is highlighted over at Thrutch, with a post on the worrying rise of religiopolitics in Europe, and news of a limited atheist fight back.

  Passive indifference to faith has left Europe's churches mostly empty. But debate over religion is more intense and strident than it has been in many decades. Religion is re-emerging as a big issue in part because of anxiety over Europe's growing and restive Muslim populations and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy...
  
  ..."The battle over religion is restarting. It is going to be a difficult one," says Terry Sanderson, president of Britain's National Secular Society... The most potent force driving activist atheism is concern that Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, is jeopardizing the principles of the Enlightenment -- and emboldening other religions to raise their voices, too, and re-fight old battles... Such faith-based agitation, says [University of London professor Anthony] Grayling, threatens a "dark ages for free enquiry and free speech."

  See Theocracy Watch: The Re-emergence of Religion in Europe.
  
  
• Some of you might have seen the recent issue of Time magazine which baldly stated as fact many myths about global warming that your average tin foil hat wearer would reject as too outlandish, including for example the bald claim about so-called "climate refugees," people -- "about 25 million" -- displaced by global warming-induced disasters, "such as those in the Papua New Guinean Carteret Islands, who have been forced to relocate due to a rising ocean level." Trouble is, that's just not true. It's just as untrue as a similar claim in Al Bore's film about "climate refugees" flooding into NZ (have you seen them?). The problem in the Pacific, such as it is, is not rising sea levels but sinking islands.
  
  
• And finally, if surgery was like Wikipedia, here's how little surgery would get done. Hilarious!.
  

Enjoy your weekend!

Rugby, soccer, and AFL.

Two stories this morning on three sports.

First, soccer. David Beckham is to star in some movie or other: Doubts are raised over his acting ability; Helen Mirren says he might make a silent movie actor, and Beckham tells a television interviewer he has no doubts about his acting ability since he has to "act on the field."

That pretty says all you need to know about soccer, doesn't it. Acting wins. Just ask Italy -- a Hollywood won them the Soccer World Cup.

Now to rugby, and today's Herald headline: .

Rugby: Game is poor entertainment says departing Wallaby coach
Departing Wallabies kicking coach Ben Perkins has unleashed a withering broadside on rugby.
Perkins, who quit his post on Sunday... said rugby was poor entertainment... A part-time kicking coach for AFL side Port Adelaide, Perkins worked with Wallabies goalkickers Stirling Mortlock, Matt Giteau and John Eales among others over a decade.

"If you go to training, like I have in rugby for the last 10 years, it is a struggle because there's such a lack of creativity there," he said.

"It's so bent on, 'oh, it's scrum time, it's lineout time, it's defence time, it's rucks and mauls time', whereas if you go to Australian Rules training ... it's exciting, there's so much activity and there's balls and running everywhere. For me, it's a much better game."

He's right you know. Maybe when Perkins moves to Queenstown to "ski and play golf" the NZAFL could offer him a job as Development Officer?

LINKS: The head butt felt around the world - The bastardly smile
Rugby: Game is poor entertainment says departing Wallaby coach - NZ Herald

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