Using the bully pulpit
Friday, November 6th, 2009
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Mayors have power. No doubt about it. The power of the bully pulpit is one of the powers. When Mayors talk … people listen. They don’t necessarily agree but they listen.
An outspoken Kiwi politician has proposed a new solution to the country’s child abuse problem – pay the “appalling underclass” not to breed.
Michael Laws – who stirred up controversy by calling the late Tongan King a “bloated brown slug” – has again hit the headlines.
“That there is a group within our society who give their children no hope nor opportunity from the moment that they are born,” the regional mayor wrote on the New Zealand radio websitewhere he broadcasts as a talkback DJ.
“That these ‘parents’ are known to authorities … and yet the authorities can only intervene after children have been harmed.”
Mr Laws goes on to write: “it would be far better for this appalling underclass to be offered financial inducements not to have children, given the toxic environment that they would provide for any child in their care.”
The mayor believes “the consequent financial and social savings to our community would be considerable.
“There are too many people who should not have children.”
Mr Laws said a report in New Zealand’s Dominion-Post newspaper yesterday had incorrectly attributed the view to him that all those who got welfare should be sterilised.
Mr Laws wrote on the website ”that most welfare beneficiaries are good parents” but it was the problem ones who should be offered money not to breed.
Yesterday’s Dominion-Post newspaper quotes him as saying: “If we gave $10,000 to certain people and said ‘we’ll voluntarily sterilise you’ then all of society would be better off.”Â
“There’d be less dead children and less social problems.”
Any volunteers to defend this position?
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