New blog: Brash + Mitchell

There's a 'new' blog in town, and it's called Brash + Mitchell.

It's not entirely new, of course. With the thankful departure of Michael Bassett and Rodney Hide, their old blog of Bassett, Brash + Hide has become Brash + Mitchell -- that's Don Brash and Lindsay Mitchell to you.

I have no idea why Bassett and Hide departed, but I'm glad they've gone. 

Without them we might expect the blog to be both more principled, less self-congratulatory -- and certainly less wet. 

And since Lindsay Mitchell's solo blog is so criminally under-read, here's hoping her writing will attract a much wider audience.

I commend it to your attention:

"More than two decades on, the speech reads less like a product of its time and more like a warning that New Zealand chose to ignore."

 

"Today [now yesterday] is the last Tuesday of January. It is a date that should matter more in New Zealand’s political memory than it does.

"On the last Tuesday of January in 2004, Dr. Don Brash stood at the Orewa Rotary Club and delivered what remains one of the most important political speeches given in this country in modern times. It was calm, forensic, unapologetic and, most importantly, correct.

"More than two decades on, the speech reads less like a product of its time and more like a warning that New Zealand chose to ignore.

"Brash opened by setting out five priorities that would be familiar to anyone paying attention today. Declining relative incomes compared with Australia. An education system failing the least privileged. Welfare dependency eroding personal responsibility. A justice system more concerned with offenders than victims. And finally, the issue he focused on that night, the dangerous drift toward racial separatism and the entrenchment of what he rightly called the treaty grievance industry.

"That phrase alone was enough to end his political career.* Not because it was wrong, but because it was accurate."

~ Matua Kahurangi from his post 'The last Tuesday of January and the speech New Zealand still refuses to confront'

* To be fair,  his political career didn't end immediately; but it had been put on notice. Even a near-reversal in National's worst-ever election loss under Bill English wasn't enough to save it.

Who is really responsible for getting inflation under control?

"[N]obody should be under any illusion: the Government’s ongoing stimulatory fiscal policy is contributing to the need for the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates, something which the Treasury warned the Minister just weeks before the Budget when the Minister decided he wanted to dole out some cash sweeteners....
    "It’s like a car being driven with one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator – the more the Government stimulates the economy with fiscal policy, the harder the Reserve Bank will need to apply the brakes of higher interest rates."

~ Don Brash, from his op-ed 'Who is really responsible for getting [price] inflation under control?' [link fixed]

#TopTen | No. 9: Hobson’s Pledge: Racism?

 

This year so far I’ve written and posted 797 posts. (This is the 798th)

Of those, this from September  30th was the ninth most popular, wondering how it can be racist to demand the law be colour-blind – and how those making those charges make them stick. Or not …

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Hobson’s Pledge: Racism?

The commentariat is all aflame this week attacking the new “Hobson’s Pledge” movement, launched this week by Don Brash. Their vision for New Zealand, they say, “is a society in which all citizens are equal before the law, irrespective of when they or their ancestors arrived in this land.” Brash warns in particular of “iwi participation agreements” in proposed RMA amendments that “would virtually entrench co-governance and partnership obligations with some Maori into local government, creating an under-the-radar constitutional change”; and cites the ongoing farce of Maori seats in parliament and, increasingly, in local government that tribalises governance and decreases democracy and individual rights.

But “they’re racist!” says the commentariat in response. Which is odd, because the very foundation statement of the “Hobson’s Pledge” movement is that we should all be colour-blind before the law. (Hence, Hobson's Pledge, i.e., “He Iwi Tahi Tatou | We Are Now One People.”) And in calling the group things like "pale, male and stale," their opponents themselves reveal just a touch of the racism (and sexism) they claim so vehemently to oppose.

So how do we resolve this apparent contradiction? Let’s start by looking at how several alleged luminaries justify their claim that it’s racist to call for law and lawmakers to be colour-blind. How exactly do they square that circle?

Writing for Stuff, Laura McQuillan doesn’t even try to. “Is Don Brash's new Hobson's Pledge the support group that white people need?” she asks rhetorically in a piece that bizarrely references “Black Lives Matter,” the National Front and some skinhead group called Right Wing Resistance before pulling out and quoting entirely unrelated comments on a piece of clickbait she’d written the week before asking “Which is New Zealand’s whitest region?” all garnished with a quote she’d simply made up herself from a fellow she claims to be “leader” of 1Law4All. (He’s not.) But I bet she thinks she’s not the racist – and that making up quotes is probably “justified corruption.”

Talking out of his arse, Hone Harawira also simply asserts the moot. "Come on, absolutely this is racism and it's time somebody called it out," he says, offering no argument for his claim Brash is “a redneck or a racist.” Neither does professional Maori Willie Jackson, who litters his “debate” with Brash will claims that he’s old, that he’s talking rubbish, that everyone is against Maori, and that so-called “urban Maori” need more privileges from the government. Jackson, of course, represents (or claims to) so-called “urban Maori.”

Jackson, Harawira, Susan Devoy and others talk about the bad “outcomes” that confront Maori, young and old, but none bother to address the claim that the law is not colour-blind and should be, nor show that these bad outcomes can in any way be attributed to racism. (Indeed, a strong argument exists that it is Maori over-reliance on welfare and legal privilege that has all but guaranteed the bad outcomes they cite.)

But there’s more. Media darling Toby Manhire takes on the important topic of logos and where the Hobson’s Pledge website got that picture above. Answer: like most media pics these days (including those the luminaries themselves use, it’s from an American photo library.)

Tim Watkin too conflates the issue of privilege and legal privilege, as if they were one and the same. (No, Tim, they’re not.) But he at least acknowledges the existence of so-called “affirmative action,”  while asserting its effects have been positive – “what Brash calls 'Maori privilege.'” he says, “others call redressing the wrongs of history… an effort to tackle 150 years of race-based privilege [that] is helping avoid more unrest in this country.” (How Maori seats, Maori scholarships, Maori welfare, Maori educational tokenism, and iwi co-governance in local government “avoids unrest” we are not told however.) And he is big enough too to acknowledge “there are valid issues lurking among [what he calls] nonsense -

for example, the fact that settlements are based on where tribes happened to sit in a moment of history (1840), how far respect for Maori spirituality goes and how we manage Maori representation in local government. But it's all based on an intellectual foundation made of rubble and rubbish. The profound wisdom that we should all be equal before the law is twisted and imprisoned in what becomes an argument for privilege to be entrenched with a certain people (Pakeha) at a certain time in history (today).

If you can make sense of that last sentence, by the way, then you’re a better parser of them than I.

He argues constitutional law, and gets it wrong, saying:

They [the Hobson’s Pledge movement] show their failure to understand the most basic ideas of a constitution, by on one hand saying "The Treaty of Waitangi is not in any meaningful sense New Zealand’s constitution" and yet in the very next line saying that the Treaty did cede sovereignty, protect property rights and establish Maori as British subjects.
    Even given that slanted interpretation, it clearly acknowledges that the treaty deals with rights and power, which is, er, what a constitution is all about.

It’s certainly true that ceding sovereignty, protecting property rights, and establishing Maori as British subjects with all the rights and privileges thereof are the foundations for something that might become a constitution – something, importantly, that would elucidate what those rights and privileges are, and how a government would be constituted to protect them. That something would be a constitution. But it would need something much more comprehensive than the Treaty’s three spare clauses to become one.

And it would need much else excised from modern law …

I’ve been saving the best for last, since it’s both the most absurd and the most-passed around. In recent years Mihinirangi Forbes has become almost the patron saint of media types. Posted at the taxpayer-funded ivory tower of Radio NZ under the title of “Analysis,” RNZ’s “Māori Issues Correspondent” asks of Brash and co right off the bat ‘How Pākehā are you?’

So we’re already downhill skiiing from the outset, and the trajectory is just further down. It’s worth some fisking because it captures so many of the criticisms.

The group's website is emblazoned with the saying "He iwi tahi tātou - One People" - a phrase famously used by Governor William Hobson as he greeted Māori chiefs as they arrived to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, the country's founding document.
    It's a document guaranteeing iwi full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands, forests and fisheries. That's not promoted on the lobby group's website.

Well, yes it is. Unfortunately, however, it’s promoted under the aegis of the conspiratorial “Littlewood Treaty” nonsense that talks about pieces of paper being discovered years later in drawers that, say the claimants, just happen to be the real Treaty.

The group nonetheless do acknowledge, and on the group’s very front page, that the Treaty did in fact guarantee to protect the property rights of all New Zealanders – those being the rights of both non-Maori and Maori over property they wish and desire to retain in their possession, to recognise all the relevant words of the document in question. And it’’s worth noting that Forbes and others fail themselves to promote the document’s guarantee that sovereignty was in fact ceded by the signatories.

Important point that.

Forbes continues:

It's also a document which grants Māori the same rights and privileges as Pākehā, but it's the word privilege which appears to have Hobson's Pledge members concerned. [Emphasis in the original.]

Forbes equivocation over the word “privilege” is of a piece with Watkins’s. The Treaty guaranteed all the rights and privileges of British citizens. Not more rights, or greater privileges. Not affirmative action or co-governance.

She continues, citing (as dishonest hacks will) the weaker arguments she can find from protagonists, before summing up in he r words the aim of the group:

Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand, but one group featured prominently in spokesperson Dr Brash's interviews: Māori.
    Other members thought it important to question how Māori some Māori actually were.

A lot there buried in two sentences.

Yes, Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand. That this means they are arguing against the committed programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori means that the ongoing programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori be mentioned. No mystery there.

Yet she’s right to note that an organisation talking about being colourblind needs to be rigorous in its own ocular hygiene, and how Maori some Maori actually are is and always should be wholly irrelevant to anyone truly colourblind. So she has a point.

Mr McVicker, Mike Butler and Mr Oakley seemed offended when asked how Pākehā they were. They all said the question was irrelevant, with Mr Butler calling it a "race-based question."
    But they had no difficulty talking about the percentage of Māori blood people might have, including myself [says Forbes].

She has a point. A point I’ve made to many of these people before, and one that Forbes to her credit has recognised that Brash avoids.

But she concludes with the same equivocation as many others, between legal and economic privilege.

What did the human beings think of Māori inequalities in health, education, life expectancy or incarceration?
    Mr Shirtcliffe offered a quick reply:
     "We are a very simple, single focused movement relating to the issue of equality in governance and
        property rights; other issues are not for us."

Almost the right response. But that issue must be “for them,” because if that equivocation remains unchallenged, this ship called Hobson’s Pledge will take on water as every other similar project has.

And it will only fuel the cries of “racism,” even where it doesn’t exist.

So how do the critics of the group defend their claim that the group is racist? Simple: they don’t try to. They don’t even define what they mean by it, since of course that would make their job harder: Racism being:

Assessing the worth of a person by his skin colour and ancestry. The lowest form of collectivism -- what author Ayn Rand calls a "barnyard" form of collectivism.

The Pledgers don’t help themselves with ridiculous talk of bloodlines in a discussion that’s supposed to be about being colourblind, but the commentators don’t even try to properly justify what should be a serious claim, because they’re never, ever called on their dysphasia  by their media colleagues, and nor do they expect to. They publish in the full expaction of being able to write nonsense because they’ve all been taught the doctrine of “multiculturalism”: that all races are equal except for the one they think is “in power.” (Racism, to the Marxist/multiculturalist not at all being about colourblind individualism but about “power structures” and who inhabits them. Racism in this sense then being very much about not being colourblind, but about being able to skewer the “pale,male and stale” wherever you may find them.) 

This is how the likes of McQuillan can write lightweight fluff and Jackson can rely on nothing more than barroom bluster – and Forbes as can ask “how pakeha are you?” without being racist -- because they can all be confident that (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky) any means are justified in carrying out a social-justice warrior’s ends.

It’s how they can acknowledge all the affirmative action in favour of a race, can watch a race-based party form and exploit race-based seats, can sit back and say nothing as a race-based elite lord it over the peons they claim to represent,  all because in their minds these people are not “part of the power structure” – yet will write up a hyperbolic fervour should anyone have the temerity to call for one law for all.

They’re out of their minds.

---

RELATED POSTS:

• “You will have noticed that what used to be defined as racism has changed. It has changed because the old way of defining it was not proving politically useful. Racism, observes Robert Bidinotto, used to be defined objectively … now however it is defined politically.”
  How social-justice warriors are re-defining racism–& Hobson Pledgers can’t keep up – NOT PC
• “’Maori are legally privileged in New Zealand today,’ Whyte told Act’s annual conference in Hamilton, ‘just as the Aristocracy were legally privileged in pre-revolutionary France.’  Presumably, in making this bold comparison, our Cambridge graduate had some notion of what those aristocratic privileges included ….  Let’s list just a few of them…’”
  Chris Trotter’s questions to Jamie Whyte answered – NOT PC, 2014

 

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How social-justice warriors are re-defining racism–& Hobson Pledgers can’t keep up

 

You will have noticed that what used to be defined as racism has changed. It has changed because the old way of defining it was not proving politically useful. Racism, observes Robert Bidinotto, used to be defined objectively … now however it is defined politically.

"RACISM" USED TO BE DEFINED OBJECTIVELY: the belief that the character, intellect, and worth of any given individual is determined, not by his individual choices and actions, but by his genetic and racial ancestry. Racism is thus a variant of collectivism: judging people not as individuals, but by their accidental "membership" in some racial/ethnic collective. The belief that some racial collectives are "superior" or "inferior" to others -- intellectually, morally, aesthetically, etc. -- is a disgusting corollary of this notion of biochemical and genetic determinism.

This is the standard espoused by Martin Luther King in his deservedly famous speech in which in dared to dream big:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Racism by this objective standard is a denial of free will, and an embrace of tribalism, determinism and collectivism. So that will never do; a new definition was needed by the social-justice warrior who embraces all three:

Their new definition changes "racism" from a belief system to a political system. Now, "racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits off the oppression of others — whether they want to or not." (See the linked article.) In other words, according to this hijacked definition, in America only white people (the "dominant race") are or can be "racists," even if they harbour no attitude of racial prejudice. By contrast, no black (or "minority") can possibly be a "racist," even if they do harbour racial prejudice.
    By this redefinition, "racism" is now a genetic-based moral crime attributable to whites only, as a collective. And because whites are *inherently* racists -- even if, individually, they choose NOT to be racially prejudiced -- "racism" has become akin to the doctrine of "original sin": All whites are born guilty of the sin of racism, because they are inherently "privileged" and thus are "oppressors" of minorities...not by what they choose to do, but simply by being white.

Note how neatly the re-definition effectively overturns the whole notion of racism:

• So if you’re literally colourblind and want one law for all then you are a racist.
• And if you base your whole world-view on arguing that some races need legal preference, then you are simply a good social-justice warrior who will view Don Brash’s views as “quaint,” and will be “virtue signalling” by calling Hobson Pledgers racist.
• And when “the subverted definition of ‘racism" is even infecting the Google search engine,” this is why you know you can get away with it – even when your re-definition is the very essence of racism.

It’s astounding.

It’s such a through-going attack on the objective definition, observes Bidinotto, that even Martin Luther King’s statement itself is under attack by this new generation of ignorati.

What’s the antidote? Individualism, say Bidinotto:

[Individualism] holds that people must be judged, not as members of arbitrary classes and accidental collectives, but as INDIVIDUALS, solely on the basis of their freely chosen statements and actions. It does not attribute moral status to one's ancestry or genetics or physical traits, or to anything that is not voluntarily chosen by or under the control of the individual…
    Those who truly oppose racism must reject the racial/genetic determinism at its foundation. They must affirm the dream of Dr. King, and judge individuals by their personal character and deeds, and not by their biological ancestry or collective class "memberships." They must reject the notions of racial superiority or inferiority.
    They must embrace individualism, and reject collectivism in any form, including its lowest: racism.

They might begin by embracing the idea behind Hobson’s Pledge – embracing the individualism of One Law For All -- instead of rejecting it on the basis of collective outcomes, deterministic predictions of disaster, a phony fascination with “power structures: – and a barnyard view of human beings that is objectively racist.

..

.

Hobson’s Pledge: Racism?

 

The commentariat is all aflame attacking the “Hobson’s Pledge” movement, launched this week by Don Brash. Their vision for New Zealand, they say, “is a society in which all citizens are equal before the law, irrespective of when they or their ancestors arrived in this land.” Brash warns in particular of “iwi participation agreements” in proposed RMA amendments that “would virtually entrench co-governance and partnership obligations with some Maori into local government, creating an under-the-radar constitutional change”; and cites the ongoing farce of Maori seats in parliament and, increasingly, in local government that tribalises governance and decreases democracy and individual rights.

But “they’re racist!” says the commentariat in response. Which is odd, because the very foundation statement of the “Hobson’s Pledge” movement is that we should all be colour-blind before the law. (Hence, Hobson's Pledge, i.e., “He Iwi Tahi Tatou | We Are Now One People.”) And in calling the group things like "pale, male and stale," their opponents themselves reveal just a touch of the racism (and sexism) they claim to oppose.

So how do we resolve this apparent contradiction? Let’s start by looking at how several alleged luminaries justify their claim.

Writing for Stuff, Laura McQuillan doesn’t even try to. “Is Don Brash's new Hobson's Pledge the support group that white people need?” she asks rhetorically in a piece that bizarrely references “Black Lives Matter,” the National Front and some skinhead group called Right Wing Resistance before pulling out and quoting entirely unrelated comments on a piece of clickbait she’d written the week before asking “Which is New Zealand’s whitest region?” all garnished with a quote she’d simply made up herself from a fellow she claims to be “leader” of 1Law4All. (He’s not.) But I bet she thinks she’s not the racist – and that making up quotes is probably “justified corruption.”

Talking out of his arse, Hone Harawira also simply asserts the moot. "Come on, absolutely this is racism and it's time somebody called it out," he says, offering no argument for his claim Brash is “a redneck or a racist.” Neither does professional Maori Willie Jackson, who litters his “debate” with Brash will claims that he’s old, that he’s talking rubbish, that everyone is against Maori, and that so-called “urban Maori” need more privileges from the government. Jackson, of course, represents (or claims to) so-called “urban Maori.”

Jackson, Harawira, Susan Devoy and others talk about the bad “outcomes” that confront Maori, young and old, but none bother to address the claim that the law is not colour-blind and should be, nor show that these bad outcomes can in any way be attributed to racism. (Indeed, a strong argument exists that it is Maori over-reliance on welfare and legal privilege that has all but guaranteed the bad outcomes they cite.)

But there’s more. Media darling Toby Manhire takes on the important topic of logos and where the Hobson’s Pledge website got that picture above. Answer: like most media pics these days (including those the luminaries themselves use, it’s from an American photo library.)

Tim Watkin too conflates the issue of privilege and legal privilege, as if they were one and the same. (No, Tim, they’re not.) But he at least acknowledges the existence of so-called “affirmative action,”  while asserting its effects have been positive – “what Brash calls 'Maori privilege.'” he says, “others call redressing the wrongs of history… an effort to tackle 150 years of race-based privilege [that] is helping avoid more unrest in this country.” (How Maori seats, Maori scholarships, Maori welfare, Maori educational tokenism, and iwi co-governance in local government “avoids unrest” we are not told however.) And he is big enough too to acknowledge “there are valid issues lurking among [what he calls] nonsense -

for example, the fact that settlements are based on where tribes happened to sit in a moment of history (1840), how far respect for Maori spirituality goes and how we manage Maori representation in local government. But it's all based on an intellectual foundation made of rubble and rubbish. The profound wisdom that we should all be equal before the law is twisted and imprisoned in what becomes an argument for privilege to be entrenched with a certain people (Pakeha) at a certain time in history (today).

If you can make sense of that last sentence, by the way, then you’re a better parser of sentences than I.

He argues constitutional law, and gets it wrong, saying:

They [the Hobson’s Pledge movement] show their failure to understand the most basic ideas of a constitution, by on one hand saying "The Treaty of Waitangi is not in any meaningful sense New Zealand’s constitution" and yet in the very next line saying that the Treaty did cede sovereignty, protect property rights and establish Maori as British subjects.
    Even given that slanted interpretation, it clearly acknowledges that the treaty deals with rights and power, which is, er, what a constitution is all about.

It’s certainly true that ceding sovereignty, protecting property rights, and establishing Maori as British subjects with all the rights and privileges thereof are the foundations for something that might become a constitution – something, importantly, that would elucidate what those rights and privileges are, and how a government would be constituted to protect them. That something would be a constitution. But it would need something much more comprehensive than the Treaty’s three spare clauses to become one.

And it would need much else excised from modern law …

I’ve been saving the best for last. In recent years Mihinirangi Forbes has become almost the patron saint of media types. Posted at the taxpayer-funded ivory tower of Radio NZ under the title of “Analysis,” RNZ’s “Māori Issues Correspondent” asks of Brash and co right off the bat ‘How Pākehā are you?’ It’s worth some fisking because it captures so many of the criticisms.

The group's website is emblazoned with the saying "He iwi tahi tātou - One People" - a phrase famously used by Governor William Hobson as he greeted Māori chiefs as they arrived to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, the country's founding document.
    It's a document guaranteeing iwi full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands, forests and fisheries. That's not promoted on the lobby group's website.

Well, yes it is. Unfortunately, however, it’s promoted under the aegis of the conspiratorial “Littlewood Treaty” nonsense that talks about pieces of paper being discovered years later in drawers that, say the claimants, just happen to be the real Treaty.

The group nonetheless do acknowledge, and on the group’s very front page, that the Treaty did in fact guarantee to protect the property rights of all New Zealanders – those being the rights of both non-Maori and Maori over property they wish and desire to retain in their possession, to recognise all the relevant words of the document in question. And it’’s worth noting that Forbes and others fail themselves to promote the document’s guarantee that sovereignty was in fact ceded by the signatories.

Important point that.

Forbes continues:

It's also a document which grants Māori the same rights and privileges as Pākehā, but it's the word privilege which appears to have Hobson's Pledge members concerned. [Emphasis in the original.]

Forbes equivocation over the word “privilege” is of a piece with Watkins’s. The Treaty guaranteed all the rights and privileges of British citizens. Not more rights, or greater privileges. Not affirmative action or co-governance.

She continues, citing (as dishonest hacks will) the weaker arguments she can find from protagonists, before summing up in he r words the aim of the group:

Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand, but one group featured prominently in spokesperson Dr Brash's interviews: Māori.
    Other members thought it important to question how Māori some Māori actually were.

A lot buried in two sentences.

Yes, Hobson's Pledgers are calling for a colourblind New Zealand. That this means they are arguing against the committed programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori means that the ongoing programme of affirmative action in favour or Maori be mentioned. No mystery there.

Yet she’s right to note that an organisation talking about being colourblind needs to be rigorous in its own ocular hygiene, and how Maori some Maori actually are is and always should be wholly irrelevant to anyone truly colourblind. So she has a point.

Mr McVicker, Mike Butler and Mr Oakley seemed offended when asked how Pākehā they were. They all said the question was irrelevant, with Mr Butler calling it a "race-based question."
    But they had no difficulty talking about the percentage of Māori blood people might have, including myself [says Forbes].

She has a point. A point I’ve made to many of these people before, and one that Forbes to her credit has recognised that Brash avoids.

But she concludes with the same equivocation as many others, between legal and economic privilege.

What did the human beings think of Māori inequalities in health, education, life expectancy or incarceration?
    Mr Shirtcliffe offered a quick reply:
        "We are a very simple, single focused movement relating to the issue of equality in governance and
        property rights; other issues are not for us."

Almost the right response. But that issue must be “for them,” because if that equivocation remains unchallenged, this ship called Hobson’s Pledge will take on water as every other similar project has.

And it will only fuel the cries of “racism,” even where it doesn’t exist.

So how do the critics of the group defend their claim that the group is racist? Simple: they don’t try to. They don’t even define what they mean by it, since of course that would make their job harder: Racism being:

Assessing the worth of a person by his skin colour and ancestry. The lowest form of collectivism -- what author Ayn Rand calls a "barnyard" form of collectivism.

The Pledgers don’t help themselves with ridiculous talk of bloodlines in a discussion that’s supposed to be about being colourblind, but the commentators don’t even try to properly justify what should be a serious claim, because they’re never, ever called on their dysphasia  by their media colleagues, and nor do they expect to. They publish in the full expaction of being able to write nonsense because they’ve all been taught the doctrine of “multiculturalism”: that all races are equal except for the one they think is “in power.” (Racism, to the Marxist/multiculturalist not at all being about colourblind individualism but about “power structures” and who inhabits them. Racism in this sense then being very much about not being colourblind, but about being able to skewer the “pale,male and stale” wherever you may find them.) 

This is how the likes of McQuillan can write lightweight fluff and Jackson can rely on nothing more than barroom bluster – and Forbes as can ask “how pakeha are you?” without being racist -- because they can all be confident that (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky) any means are justified in carrying out a social-justice warrior’s ends.

It’s how they can acknowledge all the affirmative action in favour of a race, can watch a race-based party form and exploit race-based seats, can sit back and say nothing as a race-based elite lord it over the peons they claim to represent,  all because in their minds these people are not “part of the power structure” – yet will write up a hyperbolic fervour should anyone have the temerity to call for one law for all.

They’re out of their minds.

.

The Governor resigns. Not before time. [Updated]

It was no surprise that news of Alan Bollard’s forthcoming resignation from the job of Reserve Bank Governor was followed almost immediately this morning by calls to “shake up the monetary policy.”

Directly out of the blocks before the starter’s gun was even trousered was Ganesh Nana from BERL, never backwards in coming forwards when it comes to being proved an idiot, who opined that the new governor “needed to be ‘actively involved'’ in all avenues of economic policy setting”—in other words, not just focussing on interests rates as a means by which to attempt to control inflation, Bollard’s replacement should be empowered to pull every lever he can find in the pursuit of every policy objective he (or Mr Nana) might think of.

This was bad enough. What was worse, however, was to hear the response of former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash to this rank stupidity.  Not what he said about how no foreigners need apply for the forthcoming job.  Sadly, that sort of provincialism is now par for the course in this pathetic authoritarian backwater. (Just ask the receivers of the Crafar farms.)  No, it was how Brash had the boldness to say that monetary policy, when focussed only on” keeping inflation under control” by manipulating interest rates, has “worked very well.”

“Worked very well”?

Yeah right.

'Here we sit in 2012, not half-a-dozen years since an orgy of malinvestment and a world’s record housing bubble was inflated in every developed country by the policies of their central banks—the popping of which in large part caused the depression which we are still enduring—and we have a former central banker telling us that the policy that played a leading part in this disaster (a policy that, in the name of a non-existent price stability, spatchcocks together an unstable mix of rampant monetary inflation with a stuffed-shirt bureaucrat dictating interest rates) has “worked very well.”

What a crock.

That a stuffed-shirt bureaucrat is unable even to do this job well, let alone what Messrs Nana, Hickey, Morgan et al would like them to, should be apparent just from the record. But if you want to see just how far from “on top of things” these central bankers are, , just how far from being “experts” these these desiccated economic dictators are, just read the now-released 2006 transcripts of the US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, i.e, the shysters who “oversee” the economy. These morons don’t have a clue what they’re doing. They really don’t. It’s just laughable. Page after page of “what bubble?” “aren’t we great!” and “can I get the same retirement plan as Alan.”

Or read Alan Bollard’s own book Crisis, which reveals him and his so-called “experts” permanently engaged in a game of “What the Fuck is Going On Out There?!” If there was one “expert” whose record was exploded by the global financial collapse it was surely Alan Greenspan. And if there was a chook with its head cut off during the global financial crisis, it was Alan Bollard.

The point is not that we need better experts in charge. The point is that the people in this job don’t lead the markets at all. Despite their now-exploded claims to omniscience, they just dictate to markets what they will pay for money while staying inside playing catch-up. As I’ve been at pains to point out here at NOT PC over recent years, it is their attempts to lead the market however that caused and causes such calamities as we are now enduring—and will continue to endure as long as the alleged experts continue to insists that things are “working well” [Brash], or that central-bank-based solutions to recovery can be found and acted on [Bernanke].

Not true. Not possible. As The Privateer says in his latest newsletter [hat tip Louis Boulanger],

“Before even a hint of a genuine recovery can take place, there has to be recognition of what it is that the financial world must recover from. What the financial world must recover from is a system whose vital components - money, prices and interest rates - are all controlled by edict and not by the voluntary interaction of people exchanging goods and services in the marketplace.”

I’m all for “changing the role of the Reserve Bank governor. I’m all for “shaking up the policy settings” of an economic dictator who has no place in a free market.

But what I’d like to do is give him less work, not more.  Radically less work.

And I wouldn’t even mind if it was a foreigner who was paid not to do it.

UPDATE: Libz Propose Winding Down Reserve Bank

The Libertarianz Party is asking John Key to consider postponing and possibly cancelling any replacement for retiring Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard, ...

Brash gets support from The Bush

Don Brash may not have found anyone in his own party willing to back his call for hard sense on cannabis without the moral panic—and instead of backing the call the hipsters from Grey Lynn who should have supported it have instead lambasted him—but there is one political party leader at least prepared to do the right thing, and that’s Libertarianz leader and Wairarapa candidate Dr Richard McGrath. He told the Wairarapa Times-Age “it’s a freedom thing.”

"There is no longer a place for the enforcement of puritanical laws that make people's bodies the property of the state," he said.
    Mr McGrath said he has worked as a doctor in the field of alcohol and drug dependence and believed that "drug use is a health issue, not a legal one."
    Legalisation of drug possession in Portugal over the last 10 years had resulted in less drug use overall, including in the under 18 age group, lower rates of HIV infection, and more people coming forward for assistance with problems associated with drug use, he said.
There was no reason to be frightened of giving people back sovereignty over their bodies, he said.
"Fundamentally, the issue of drug use is a moral one, with the fundamental question being: Who owns your body - you, or the politicians?"

Don’t like drugs? Then legalise cannabis.

Cannabis is supposed to be a “gateway” drug? The drug that leads people on to harder drugs?

Bullshit.

What makes harder drugs so prevalent is Prohibition. If you don’t believe me, then just ask  thousands of current and former members of law enforcement who support drug regulation rather than prohibition—including Scotland Yard’s former head of drug policing.

• Prohibition doesn't get drugs off the street. The government can't even get rid of drugs in the controlled environment of a prison, so they certainly can't get rid of them from the relative freedom of our streets. Which means….
• Outlawing drugs doesn't make them go away; it simply puts them in the hands of outlaws, and in the hands of the soft targets on whom the outlaws focus. Which means…
• Prohibition limits demand a little, but it limits supply a lot -- as every economics student knows, this pushes up prices a lot, and gives remaining dealers a profit on a plate.
• Prohibition means people don't stop consuming drugs they just change the drugs they're consuming.

Which means there is what Milton Friedman called an “Iron Law of Prohibition” (yes, ACT members, that Milton Friedman) which says that the more you actively prohibit drugs, then it is the more virulent drugs you actively encourage.  Which means instead of the relatively benign drugs like cannabis, alcohol and tobacco being easily available and sold by friendly pharmacists, it’s the nasty stuff instead—and peddled by fearless gang members.   Johann Hari summarises:

‘You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society [said Friedman]. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favour are a major source of the evils you deplore.’
    Friedman proved, for example, that prohibition changes the way people use drugs, making many people use stronger, more dangerous variants than they would in a legal market. 
    During alcohol prohibition, moonshine eclipsed beer; during drug prohibition, crack is eclipsing coke. He called his rule explaining this curious historical fact “the Iron Law of Prohibition”: the harder the police crack down on a substance, the more concentrated the substance will become.
    Why? If you run a bootleg bar in Prohibition-era Chicago and you are going to make a gallon of alcoholic drink, you could make a gallon of beer, which one person can drink and constitutes one sale – or you can make a gallon of pucheen, which is so strong it takes thirty people to drink it and constitutes thirty sales. Prohibition encourages you produce and provide the stronger, more harmful drink.
    If you are a drug dealer in Hackney, you can use the kilo of cocaine you own to sell to casual coke users who will snort it and come back a month later – or you can microwave it into crack, which is far more addictive, and you will have your customer coming back for more in a few hours. Prohibition encourages you to produce and provide the more harmful drug.
    For Friedman, the solution was stark: take drugs back from criminals and hand them to doctors, pharmacists, and off-licenses. Legalize. Chronic drug use will be a problem whatever we do, but adding a vast layer of criminality, making the drugs more toxic, and squandering £20bn on enforcing prohibition that could be spent on prescription and rehab, only exacerbates the problem. ‘Drugs are a tragedy for addicts,’ he said. “But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike.’

It’s not complicated.  If you don’t want gangs deciding what drugs your children are going to dabble with, because they will, then end the War on Drugs now.

If you do want a legal, transparent, accountable market for drugs, rather than an illegal, secretive, unaccountable one, then end the War on Drugs now.

If you want police cracking down on real criminals instead of spending time frisking people harming only themselves, then end the War on Drugs now.

Because if you can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, then you sure as hell can’t keep them off the streets.

How could you end Prohibition easily? Well, here’s a simple proposal: just start by unbanning all the drugs less harmful than alcohol. (According to Britain’s widely respected Lancet journal of medicine, that means we could immediately legalise for recreational use (in decreasing order of harm): Buprenoprhine, Cannabis, Solvents, LSD, Methylphenidate, Anabolic steroids, GHB, Ecstacy, Alkyl Nitrites, Khat, and di-hydrogen monoxide.) On what rational basis could anybody object? Especially if they’re an alcohol “user” themselves?

NB, for those not familiar with Uncle Milt’s Iron Law of Prohibition, here’s a handy summary:

Don, John and the right to take a toke [update 2]

Good news from yesterday’s speech by Don Brash, with two announcements from an ACT leader that are long overdue: that he thinks folk have the right to defend themselves and their loved ones, and the right to ingest cannabis if they so desire. [Full speech here.]

That it has taken this long for an ACT leader to state the bleeding obvious is tragic, especially since there’s little chance of any ACT MPs being returned next election—and if there are, then little chance of any ACT MPs or board members voting to make either policy their party’s policy.

Can you see John Banks (potentially their only MP) promoting your freedom to put into your body what (and whom) you see fit? Not a chance. [UPDATE: See.]

Can you see him attacking the police for victimising crime’s victims instead of the perpetrators of said crimes? Not a hope. No more than he can credibly promote the party’s position on fiscal responsibility after leaving his Auckland City Council over $800 million in debt under his stewardship.

So this is what it appears to be then; a trial balloon released just to attract attention, without any  commitment as to policy. What’s surprising about this tepid non-announcement however is how surprised the commentariat is that an ACT Party leader would (gasp) muse aloud about policy positions like this, because policies like this always should have been firmly in ACT’s territory.

Even if the country’s clueless, calcified commentariat is unable to see the connection between the right to pursue your own happiness and the right to defend your own life—two rights which are linked as one in freedom—if ACT ever had a reason to exist then it was to promote the policies of freedom and individual rights, i.e., policies like this, while all around them parties were peddling the opposite. That they’ve rarely if ever done so has led them to the place they are now: which is to have made themselves completely and deservedly unelectable, and incapable of promoting the very policies their party’s leader (and many of their members) would like them to promote.

Mind you, at least the party’s other John is leaving. That can only be good news for ACT’s few remaining freedom-lovers who do want to promote the right thing in a party committed to principles, not just politics. I do genuinely wish them good luck.  (One John down, one more to go?)

UPDATE 1: And here’s another John, and this one’s talking gibberish.

UPDATE 2: Eric Crampton makes some excellent points:

… ACT would do best to return to its classical liberal roots - that there's an unserviced space that's relatively liberal on economic and on social issues. As a right-wing rump to National, more liberal on economics but conservative on social issues, they'd be bound in the spot occupied by the Greens on the left - forever taken for granted by the dominant coalition partner because they couldn't plausibly bring down the government in favour of a coalition led by the main party on the other side. And, I've also thought that staking out a position on marijuana legalization could be a good way of signalling a move to that space. It would confound the usual narrative dominated by right-left thinking and, in so doing, bring a lot of positive press for ACT as it moves into a different space.
    So I was really pleased to hear Don Brash musing about marijuana decriminalization over the weekend. Sure, decriminalization hardly goes far enough: if the trade remains illegal but possession legal, production remains split between informal household production among those into gardening, friendly informal supply among friends (albeit with risk that comes with growing more plants than is needed for personal use), and the gangs. Cactus Kate is right: full legalization is better.

…Brash [has] tried to pull the Party to the liberal side - a move that makes sense, but is hard given ACT's starting point. It wasn't made easier by that a bunch of people who claim to support marijuana decriminalization started piling on making fun of Brash's policy move. Yeah, you know who you are. It's all hip to make fun of the 70-year-old who's obviously hardly come within smelling distance of pot and pretend that he's a dope-head for advocating policy change….  
    If the result of pushing for rational policy discussion is to be made a laughingstock even by those who purport to support rational policy, it ain't hard to figure out the likely effect on the supply of rational policy discussion… There's no way that the politicians will lead public opinion on this one, but there's good chance they'd follow. [However] if even the pundits who agree with legalization make fun of the politicians who support it, no chance of any kind of policy move until there's obvious public support…
The issue's now dead. And ACT probably is too.

ACT reject coalition

Don Brash announced yesterday that the ACT Party, if it still exists after November, may not go into formal coalition with any government.

And nor should they

A principled party would not need to.

And a party with John Banks holding the anchor seat would not want to.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: On non-“Maorification” and beyond

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath invites you to come on down to his surgery for an inoculation against this week’s stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.
This week: A tale of two Ansells

• NZ HERALD: “Act ad man quits after blasting 'apartheid'”:  Former ACT marketing 'guru' John Ansell has been sent packing by Don Brash following his airing of outspoken views on pre- and post-European Maori and the government's attitude to Maori cultural values…

THE DOCTOR SAYS: John Ansell is perfectly entitled to hold opinions of any kind. Whether he should have shared these in his previous capacity as a representative of the ACT Party is a matter for ACT leader Don Brash to decide - which he did. Rightly.So, what does the Libertarianz Party think about Ansell's comments? Initially, Mr Ansell's name rang a bell, and a quick online search reminded me that one Colin Ansell (formerly King-Ansell) had been the leader at various times of the NZ version of Britain's National Front.

John Ansell has no connection to Colin Ansell beyond his name. But in perusing the websites of the haters while pursuing the bell-ringing, I noticed a few interesting things that strongly distinguish intelligent libertarians from the shaven-headed race-baiters.  A perusal of the NZ National Front's policies, for instance, as outlined on Wikipedia, reveals just how different far-right parties are from the libertarian ethos of small government and maximum freedom:

• There are a few area of commonality - the fascists want abolition of the Waitangi Treaty; Libertarianz would respect the Treaty as a historical but outdated document which should not be the basis for assigning rights and responsibilities. These should be based on a constitution that champions individual rights and does not allow for race-based legislation.
• And they claim to want the abolition of institutionalised political correctness - as does Libertarianz - but I wonder if instead the fascists want to replace the current multicultural form of PC with their own white Anglo-Saxon nationalist version.
• The fascists want a ban on foreign ownership and control of New Zealand assets. In this, they would of course have the support of Jane Kelsey, John Minto and the other CAFCA xenophobes. The Libertarianz Party believes in free trade and would welcome investment from overseas, just as it would push for New Zealanders to be able to invest in foreign markets.
• The fascists want government to enforce the maintenance of Western Judeo-Christian morality and values; Libertarianz believes Government should not be endorsing any particular cultural values, and just as it would not promote "Westernisation" neither would it promote "Maorification."
• The fascists are opposed to the immigration of people with non-Western values, and advocate the deportation of Asians, Africans and people from the Middle East (which would no doubt include Jews). Libertarianz would welcome the arrival of anyone willing to obey the laws of the land. In a society with a privatised welfare system, immigrants would not pose the sort of threat to the economy that currently exists when the newly arrived are corrupted by the availability of unconditional money obtained from other New Zealanders by force.
• The fascists want an apartheid arrangement where "Maori" and "white" cultures enjoy separate governance. Impossible without a partitioning of races/cultures. The Libertarianz Party want the opposite - a blending together of all New Zealanders with mutual respect by all for the (individual) rights of others.
• The fascists want State acquisition of the Reserve Bank - Libertarianz utterly oppose state ownership of any banks, believing in free banking independent of political interference. The Reserve Bank would be shut down by a Libertarianz government under which there would be no such entity as a central bank. Interest rates and money supply would be determined by allowing a free market in banking and by prosecuting counterfeiting of the type practiced by our Reserve Bank.
• The fascists want a withdrawal from free trade agreements - in fact from all international trade! Yes,a fortress New Zealand, as favoured by Jim Anderton. A recipe for stagnation, poverty, starvation, famine and death.
• The fascists want organic farming supported by state subsidies - the Greens would love them. Libertarianz would call a halt to political interference in the farming sector and in research and development. Organic farming would have to stand or fall on its own merits. There would be no favouritism toward any particular business model.
• The fascists, in line with the Catholic church and conservative lobbyists, oppose women having control over their bodies and being able to procure safe, legal abortions. The Libertarianz Party believe a woman's body is her own and as such should have total ownership and control over everything within it.  
• The fascists, like the left wing of the Labour Party, Minto, Kelsey et al, want New Zealand to withdraw from ANZUS. Actually, that may not be a bad thing given President Obama's past links to communists and racists, and signs that Julia Gillard's premiership may be brief due to her abandonment of rational thought.
• The fascists want to reintroduce capital punishment - the Libertarianz Party opposes capital punishment, believing that governments should not violate the individual rights of their citizens by killing them, instead enforcing restorative justice.
• And of course the fascists want compulsory military training, as trumpeted by the Winston Peters Party. Lots of young people marching around in brown shorts carrying huge flags and saluting The Leader. Fortunately, because it opposes slavery of any sort, there would be no CMT under a Libertarianz government. The army would be small during peacetime and made up of volunteers.
• I would wager the fascists would also advocate the prosecution of anyone self-medicating without Nanny's permission, just like National, Labour, the Greens, Maori Party, the Anderton and Peters Parties, Peter Dunne-Nothing and even ACT. They would probably want homosexuality recriminalised. Libertarianz believes the sovereign is individuals and thus that adults should be able to make decisions for themselves about such things as medication and sexual preference. The other parties don't trust New Zealanders and want to treat them like children.
  Only the Libertarianz Party believes in treating New Zealanders aged over 18 years as adults. Under a Libertarianz administration, the only activities that would be banned are those that cause harm to others. Anyone got a problem with that?

John Ansell did get two things dead right.

First, Prime Minister John Key is an incompetent economic manager - Bill English is still borrowing a billion dollars every three weeks.

Second, the National Party have abandoned - betrayed - their stated values. Key, English and most, if not all, of the National Party caucus are quislings, interested only in the retention of power at any price. Disgusting specimens of humanity, corrupted by the baubles of office. Why anyone would waste their vote on these cockroaches is beyond me.

The alternative to choking down the bile as one ticks the box next to your local National drone this November is to vote for a Libertarianz candidate. There is a candidate in Epsom who left Auckland ratepayers with a debt equal to what Bill English borrows every fortnight, and he may just find himself reminded of this as election day draws closer by someone from Libertarianz. Watch this space.

And, before anyone takes umbrage, I don't believe John Ansell is related in any way to the former leader of the far-right lunatic fringe National Front head cases.  But what I found when I confirmed the lack of connection was interesting enough to comment.

See you next wwek
Doc McGrath

To Don Brash, regarding the RMA

Don Brash has been a disappointment.

In recent weeks he’s been talking up the problems created by the National Party’s Resource Management Act (RMA), and talking down the ability of people to do business on their own property because of it.

That’s not disappointing, by the way. That much at least is excellent.

“Little Hitlers”he called the bossy-booted small-minded vermin who get to act out their delusions of power under its wing. And so they are.  “The biggest single obstacle to economic growth in New Zealand” he called the RMA. And so it is.

He could have, but didn’t, point out it represents “the greatest theft of property rights since the war”—but I’m sure he knows that.

So like ACT leaders of the past, he can talk a good game about the various iniquities of the ACT. Yet (just like ACT leaders of the past) when he comes to actually advocating anything is done to remove this piece of postmodern fascism, he turns into blancmange.

Instead of advocating removal, abolition—a stake through its heart—instead of any of these things it’s crying out for he talks about “reform.”  Just like every other ACT leader has in the past.

What a pathetic, weak-kneed, misinformed disappointment.

When I challenged Don about this backsliding the reason he gave for this softcock soft soap was:

if Parliament were simply to "remove" the RMA I think you'd be left with the Town and Country Planning Act, which hardly seems to me to be an improvement. If the RMA were to be amended so that it was made abundantly clear that property owners should be free to do on their own property whatever they please, provided it does not jeopardise the property rights of others, that would be a major step forward.

This is very disappointing. Not to mention misguided and misinformed.

It would be like saying a rejection of Vladmir Putin would require the reincarnation of Leonid Brezhnev. Or (to put it in central banking terms) the overturning of the Central Bankers' "Great Moderation" would  require the reintroduction of Arthur Burns' profligate 1970s inflation. Or to put it in terms teenagers might understand, like saying a rejection of Justin Bieber implies we must embrace Britney Spears.

This is, of course, nonsense. Nonsense on stilts. It’s nothing more than a bureaucrat's false alternative.
If that's all the advice Don is getting about replacements for the RMA, then I suggest he very quickly change his advisers.

It’s true that the virus of town planning came to NZ in the twenties, but it didn’t really begin attacking the economy’s internal organs until recently.

Introduced by the National Party, the RMA has now been with us for just eighteen years. The Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA)*, which was also introduced by National (are you seeing a pattern here?) had been with us for around two decades before that.

These are hardly historically significant time periods over which to measure the failure of these two acts to “balance” property rights and the environment.

Compare that with the signal success of Common Law over seven-hundred years to protect both. That Don and his advisers are apparently so blithely unaware of this history is worse than disappointing. For a party, and a leader, who purport to stand for strong property rights this is simply unforgivable.

The point anyway is not just to advocate AGAINST the RMA (and then to accept what you're given by the bureaucrats and your advisers as a replacement) but to advocate FOR property rights, and with that advocacy to promote the system with around 700 years of success in protecting both property rights and the environment, i.e., common law.

As ACT Party candidate Cactus Kate once pointed out, common law represents and protects the “Freedom to do what you want on your property as long as it doesn't impinge on others' right of peaceful enjoyment of their property.” So why wouldn't ACT Party leaders promote that? Your guess is as good as mine. They don't, but they should.

The return to common law would eject both the RMA and TCPA regimes, along with all the bureaucrats, consultants and other parasites and hangers-on  that go with them, and represent a long overdue return to property rights and to sanity.

There are undoubtedly many ways to effect the change, but I'd suggest the simplest would be this:

1. have enacted a codification of basic common law principles, such as water rights, profits a prendre, rights to light, air and so on (which protect many long-standing and long-recognised property rights destroyed by the RMA) and the Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine (which on its own represents a powerful antidote to the disease of the planners);
2. place property rights in the Bill of Rights;
3. set up Small Consents Tribunals to begin the process by which the change can be done gradually;
4. while all this is taking place, have property titles amended with easements and covenants and so on to reflect the basic present District Plan provisions of height, density, and height-to-boundary (i.e., the very things in place when many property owners bought their present property, and on whose protection many of them rely) and make clear that property owners are now quite able  to negotiate among themselves for mutual relaxation, restriction or furtherance of these covenants.

None of that is beyond the wit of man to either grasp or introduce—certainly not someone with the intelligence of The Don.

Set that up and then go from there.

And if anyone tells you it's "not practical," then point them to the nearly 700 years in which common law was successfully practiced.

We owe it to ourselves and our grandchildren to return to it.

_ _ _ __ _

* (And despite the protestations of planning parasites, these two acts in the way they’ve been applied are really just kissing cousins, since the RMA has essentially become the TCPA with more restrictions,less certainty, and a great deal more expense—and many, many more delays. Think of it as the postmodern TCPA—the TCPA plus kaitiakitanga.)

“Little Hitlers”

All the chatterati are pretending to be incensed about Don Brash’s characterisation of council’s clipboard-wielders as “little Hitlers.”

Oh the outrage! I’m so offended! What sort of term is that to call all those nice helpful folk at the council!

What sort of term is it? Answer: as a random trawl around the internet “reveals” (as if you didn’t know) it’s a very common one:

• 1957, "Three Ways," Time, 1 Apr.:
  Editorial writers were saying last week that Egypt's Nasser was getting too big for his boots. . . . The tabloid New York Daily News asked: "What has this little Hitler ever done to make himself noteworthy?"
• 2001, “"SI" Equals "System Imbecilic",” APS Physics website
  The new abomination is SI. Because the size of approved units progresses by thousands it is awkward for almost everybody. Democracy has been achieved. The Angstrom is verboten. One must use nanometers, which make molecular structures harder to think about. The Pascal (one apple-weight per desktop) is the approved unit of pressure, perfect in the eyes of the little Hitlers because it is unintuitive and unpopular. Here even scientists rebel. Many authors give pressures in atmospheres, thus using a familiar and enduring standard. Their papers will be understandable after the Pascal is forgotten-which it will be if scientists have any sense.
• 2002, “ Rooker attacks council planning 'Hitlers' ,“ The Guardian
  The new housing and planning minister, Lord Rooker, complained today about "little Hitlers" in council planning departments and urged them to be more supportive of new developments.
• 2005, “Unleashing the Little Hitlers,” No2ID website
  Carol Sarler, writing in The Observer, warns of the tide of petty bureaucracy that would follow in the wake of compulsory ID cards
• 2005, “Cricket Fan Piers Lashes Out ar Council's 'Little Hitlers',” Mid-Sussex Times
  PARISH councillors have been accused of acting like 'little Hitlers' by controversial newspaper editor Piers Morgan in a row over a village cricket match
• 2006, “The labyrinthine links of the 'Little Hitlers',” Website of the Families & Social Services Information Team (UK)
  “A significant number of (abusive) parents,” say the guidelines, “are likely to report having experienced genuine medical problems. They may or may not have been substantiated by medical investigations.” Come again? Their children may “present a rosy picture to the outside world”, “have been seriously ill” or have a medical history that started early in life. This is a charter for Little Hitler's and busybodies.
• 2008, “Now the Little Hitlers at the town hall are getting bigger and nastier,” Daily Mail
  Why is it - and this could concern you directly, since you may be helping one of their number either into or out of power on Thursday week - that so many of our local authorities these days are swinishly vindictive?.. Little Hitlers, we used to call them 60 years ago. Now they're getting bigger.
• 2009, “Little Hitlers,” Sunday Times
  Encouraged by Silvio Berlusconi, groups of far-right vigilantes are patrolling the streets of Italy…
• 2010, “Why aren’t the Conservatives doing better?,” Adam Smith Institute
  I also think that there is a rich vein of public sentiment to be exploited by railing against all the incremental infringements of our liberty that we have suffered over the last decade – promising to get rid of all the bureaucratic little Hitlers that make British lives a misery would surely be a vote winner. In 1951, Winston Churchill campaigned under the slogan "set the people free". If the Conservatives want to reverse their decline in the polls, they desperately need to capture that same sentiment.
• 2010, “Banned by 'little Hitlers' for daring to speak out? ,” Letter to ThisIsDerbyshire website
  The little Hitlers who run Derby City Council have really exposed themselves.
• 2011,” Spoke too Soon,” Chrissie’s Place
  The traditional image of the typical council manager as a micro-managing "Little Hitler" is well entrenched in British comedy, and that is because it is so often true.
• 2011, “Bureaucracy in America,” The Economist
  The common description of bureaucrats as “little Hitlers” (does anyone know who first used this phrase?) fails, or wilfully refuses, to recognise that we all have a little Hitler in us, or more to the point, that Hitler had a little human in him too, and that a human given power will exercise it, no matter how measly it may be.
• 2011, commenter at CiF Watch , CiF Watch
  I am afraid I really think that was overkill on Spielberg’s part [to “demand Megan Fox be fired from ‘Transformers’ for calling the (Jewish) director of the film, Michael Bay, a Nazi]. Saying ‘X is a jumped up little Hitler’ is part of common discourse. C. S. Lewis described his prep school as ‘Belsen’. OK, poor taste, maybe deserves a talking to and a slapped wrist with a public apology, perhaps, but not firing. This is unhelpful, I think, and totally unnecessary.

Get the point?  And if you’re still pretending you don’t know what the term means:

little Hitler (plural little Hitlers), Noun (derogatory)
An unnecessarily or pretentiously dictatorial person - a jobsworth.
A little Hitler is a self-important tosspot who thinks he's in charge. Someone who makes up arbitrary and/or self-serving rules and has a tantrum if they aren't obeyed. They tend to have a park-keeper/traffic-warden mentality; rules are Law and rules come first. They can't handle people who threaten their authority.

Looks like the perfect term to call these jumped-up sawdust Caesars who tread so heavily on other people’s dreams.

My only disappointment then is that instead of proposing to abolish the Resource Management Act, the RMA, the Act that gives these little Hitlers their power, he instead offers only to “reform” it. Frankly, after nearly two decades of evidence against the RMA and its abuse of property rights, that’s just pissweak. Even Nick Smith talks about “reform.” And he doesn’t mean it either.

Ayn Rand once observed that “When the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know your culture is doomed.” They do. And we are. And with the explicit approval of the chatterati.

Here’s Nick Lowe from his album Jesus of Cool:

Here’s Elvis Costello:

And here’s Everything But the Girl (undoubtedly the only time they’ll ever appear here, I promise!):