The Economist comments on Obama's harrying of BP, noting that:

"After the macho rhetoric came the demands for cash. Mr Obama decided to “inform” BP that it must put adequate funds to meet all compensation claims into an escrow account beyond its control, although he has no authority to do so. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, instructed it not to pay a dividend until all claims tied to the spill are settled. Her fellow Democrats in Congress are trying to raise BP’s liability retroactively—the sort of move America’s courts rightly frown on."

 I've found distasteful the Republican and Tea Party vitriol against Obama personally. In my experience the left has been more prone to forget that they share much more with their countrymen opponents than what they differ on, and to consider their opponents to be wicked and deserving of no human respect. Now the US right sounds the same. So I've stopped reading most of their stuff.

But the BP saga seems to have revealed in Obama shortsightedness, and lack of the courage to lead wisely.  Instead of responding to the unfair criticism of his "inaction" on the Gulf spill with resignation and moderating comment, he has joined the mob. As the Economist puts it: 

"Mr Obama is not the socialist the right claims he is (see article). He went out of his way, meeting BP executives on June 16th, to insist that he has no interest in undermining the company’s financial stability. But his reaction is cementing business leaders’ impression that he is indifferent to their concerns. If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding."

What does this precedent mean for all the US firms drilling around the world, some of whom will inevitably spill oil?  How will Obama resist confiscation by corrupt or opportunist foreign governments of the assets of the firms with US connections? The US (and Europe and the rest of the world without oil) is depending on risk accepting explorers to open up new fields and wells to feed the West's cars and planes and home heating and airconditioning.

BP is big enough to survive this disaster. But what if the well had been commissioned by one of the smaller would-be explorers? The message from Obama's conduct is that drilling should be permitted only to those who have enough to loot in full compensation for a serious spill. Perhaps there will be insurance for that risk. It will be expensive, and even more tempting for an unprincipled government to loot for an "escrow fund". Could the end result be that only the big sisters, and sovereign oil firms can afford the risks of sea drilling?  

Another of the US government's aims has been to avoid the defense security risks inherent where reserves are increasingly owned and controlled by state companies under the direction of potentially hostile governments. A world in which smaller explorers have been squeezed out would not seem to serve that purpose.

A spill in the South China sea, or Indonesia, or any one of thousands of sites where firms with US links are drilling could be when the baying crowd in the US finally realise what their President has done to their interests, by putting temporary political recovery ahead of sober principle.

 Yesterday I was a commentator on Q & A's Jim Bolger/Mike Moore discussion of constitutional reform

I assumed it was a warm-up for the invitation-only Hui of the Anointed ('Reconstituting the Constitution") scheduled for 2-3 September in the Legislative Council Chamber. This Hui is apparently much more select than the one held ten years ago in the Great Hall of Parliament. So select that it is not mentioned in "upcoming events" on the website of one sponsor (the Institute of Policy Studies) and on the other (the NZ Centre for Public Law) there is no link to the agenda or anything other than the dates, the title and the words "Conference – by invitation").

So Tim Watkins had not heard of the Hui. Q & A's choice of topic was prompted only by the time running out for the Government and the Maori Party to let the rest of us know what is to emerge from their coalition committment

"Both parties agree to the establishment (including its composition and terms of reference) by no later than early 2010 of a group to consider constitutional issues including Maori representation. The Maori Party will be consulted on membership and the choice of Chairperson, and will be represented on the group."

Q & A's choice of Jim Bolger was natural. With the introduction of MMP, his sponsorship of the Treaty's role in our constitution to his sceptical National Party, and his moves to end 'imperial' links such as the old honours system, Jim Bolger made as many changes to our constitution as any recent Prime Minister. His reasons for favouring the re-establishment of a second chamber should be carefully listened to.

Mike Moore was also a great choice – no other senior ex-politician has been as willing to explore ideas without partisan bias.

In the result neither man had the time on Q & A to cover the far shores of their vision. Each could justify a session of their own.

I hope they are invited to the September hui. Neither is mentioned in the programme. The organisers appear to be determined that this time (unlike the 2000 hui, which illustrated how little consensus there was on change)  there should be no rude scoffing at the devotions of the anointed. The biographies of the three Keynote Speakers promise suitably pious sermons.

The organisers have government sponsorship through the Justice Department. If they remain coy we'll make sure that it does not remain secret.

Brilliant though I am conscious of relief that ordinary MPs did not have Parliamentary Service credit cards while I was there, so I was not led into temptation to use the card.

Friday – the revelations so far are almost reassuring. The scale of the misuse seems  less significant than it could have been, having regard to the amounts involved in the UK.

I think the attention to Tim Groser's grog bills is unfair. I hope he is glad-handing his way around the world. Getting liked and nurturing his informal networks is exactly what we want him to do. He'd not be helped by a reputation for short arms and long pockets.

Rather him than me in that life, but "someone's got to do it" is the truth in his case.

I'm nauseated by the media orthodoxy that demands a sepulchral voice and near-to-tears mien in all public discourse on death. Geoff Robinson on Morning Report has it down perfectly. I've posted before on Kathryn Ryan's aptitude to it. 

When it extends to the "tragedy" of boozed young men killing themselves in street racing, or in the course of escaping from the Police, it cries out for mockery. When the sympathy extends to those killed while committing crimes where there are real victims, there must still be thousands of New Zealanders not yet infected with the maudlin germ, who want to bawl "good riddance!".

I keep meaning to ask broadcaster friends whether they see affecting grief as simply a professional skill and requirement, or do they manage to emote themselves into feeling as maudlin as they sound.

Whatever the case, what a relief to find in Chris Trotter's blog his wonderful essay on stoicism, prompted by reactions to the  recent Iroquois crash. Indeed Chris seems to be in a lush patch at the moment, with penetrating reflections on the new wowserism, and National's engagement with Maori Party racism. His last three essays (up to 29 May) are all worth reading.

Chris seems to me to be a walking Manichean dilemma. His penetrating mind, love of history and ability to avoid the piffling emotional incontinence of many of his  struggle comrades makes him acutely aware of their failings and dishonesties.

That 'outsider' consciousness may in part spring from youthful hyper-sensitivity to class. The habit of  looking behind every curtain and questioning every orthodoxy, including those of his nasty leftist mates, may be the unavoidable (for him) consequence of long practice. I think that for many leftists the habit of 'outsider' objectivity starts as envy or even rage at feeling shut out by what they think is a gilded in-crowd who would never let them in.  

Class envy has generated the energy to propel many on the left into a life-long compensating battle to get even. By the time they find out that there is always entry if you are sufficiently amusing or smart, the habit has formed.

But Chris can not quite take the risky last step of the many others who start on the left but eventually see the unavoidable connection between collectivist fantasy and tyranny. He is no Paul Johnson.

When he sees where his own intelligence is leading him, he runs back home, to the comfort of "knowing" that deep down the noble convictions of his youth still provide the comfort of a compass he can not afford to lose, even if it has no magnetism left and the others who still follow it spin wildly in the presence of any stray electricity.

I wonder how quickly Police here could get an effective warning to people to get out of the reach of a mad gunman (or knife wielder or other highly mobile threat).  Presumably we will learn more, but in the three hours Derrick Bird was active it seems most of the people he shot were entirely unaware there was a madman on the loose.

We have been trying various ways to warn of tsunami, but sadly we are probably more likely to have deaths from a madman's spree, than a tsunami. Is radio and text enough? Do the Police know how to activate warnings quickly? Perhaps there should be a campaign to encourage us to go next door to make sure our neighbours have heard warnings when we hear them.

In country areas people are used to checking their neighbours, but perhaps we've got out of the practice in urban areas.

I like to think that in country areas in New Zealand a Derrick Bird would not have been quite so devastating as he was in Cumbria. Here most rural houses still have fire-arms. He might have been stopped a bit earlier or not felt quite so free to prey on a population made defenceless (by the dopey legislative reaction to Dunblane).

We have Lindsay Mitchell and Muriel Newman and other dedicated, valuable and brave critics of the social self destruction that is our no questions welfare system, but there is no one with the quite the same ability to skewer idiocy as Canada's Mark Steyn. Michael Laws is sometimes in the territory.

One of the certainties if Steyn was here would be a showdown with one of official bodies with which our anointed try to suppress views that offend them. It would be even odds on whether the first to "get him" would be our Human Rights Review Tribunal, the Privacy Commissioner, the Broadcasting Tribunal or a judge offended by a lack of respect for some suppression order.

His tussles with the Canadian anointed ended in a draw

Dan McCaffrey prompted this reflection, with a link to Steyn's two page pointer to what may be the silver lining of the GFC – the unwinding of don't-ask-don't-tell welfare.  Try "We're too broke to be this stupid" from the century old Canadian magazine Macleans.

I look forward to Steyn's views on the international humbug to which New Zealand has dutifully added her squeaks,  voicing "concern" about Israel's response to the dilemma posed by blockade breaking ships. What did we expect the Israelis to do – humbly lead them in to Gaza?

I have not seen the Herald on Sunday, or the TV 3 coverage, but Cactus Kate, adopted by Kiwiblog, express the views of many on Cam Slater's predicament. I contacted his lawyer Greg Thwaite after my post suggesting a fund to meet his costs and fines for defending free speech and open justice against the name suppressor's attacks.

Greg said he would look into it. On Friday evening at a dinner we both attended he said it was underway.

I do not join in the railing against the insurers, Fidelity,  or psychiatrists and other medical professionals or police or any others caught up in responding to mental illness. Anything they do will be wrong in some eyes. In hindsight it will always be possible to argue that they were too interventionist or not enough, too trusting or not enough, too harsh or not enough, too ready with the pills, or not enough. I'm just glad that curiousity took me to the third year of psychology at university, then judgment said "whoop whoop – pull up" before I got drawn into too much more time with would-be science that was not there yet, time with people uncertain of their own sanity, time with people with no choice but to work without a reliable intellectual compass, yet who must pretend to have one (and perhaps come to believe that whatever compass  they have is better than it is). 

Society wants them to evince confidence, and to wield authority despite their absence of scientific assurance. They have no choice but to make hard choices under that uncertainty, knowing that the consequences will hurt, sometimes tragically.

I'd be surprised if disability insurance is not a thankless area of business, at least as it relates to mental illness. All insurance carries the risk of moral hazard – the risk that paying for a condition tempts people to fake loss. We get more of what we pay for.

Welfare can protect the genuinely helpless for whom life without benefits would be desperate. Discrimination between the deserving and the undeserving poor can never be without bitter controversy. But the cost to New Zealand of giving up has been the creation of  thousands of beneficiaries useless to themselves and others.

Insurers who are not suspicious and tough go out of business. They attract those willing to burn their own property (when values are falling or they are in financial strife). Many readers will have exaggerated the value of goods stolen or lost  in a claim. Freezing workers cut themselves carefully to qualify for the period of ACC they want.

An orginal Woodhouse Report justification for the automatic coverage of work injuries was that the year or so spent in personal injury litigation to determine a workers' compensation tort claim, led to unnecessary permanent incapacity as people became accustomed to the helplessness they exaggerated to maximise their court award.

ACC still creates the same temptation – malingering becomes a self perpetuating condition. Yet when an insurer applies the level of suspicion and challenge to claims that it must if malingering is not to become epidemic, it will unavoidably be "harsh" to some whose condition is genuine, and for whom more generosity could be helpful.

But even there it is wise to refrain from too much confident judgment. There is plenty of evidence that enabling learned dependency can be more harmful in the long run for many borderline cases, than obliging people to test their limits and get into a "must do – can do" frame of mind.

As all this affects Cam Slater – I do not presume to judge.

But I remain grateful to him for challenging the judges and the iniquitous law that shelters privileged wrongdoers behind secrecy orders. When Greg tells us where to send donations, I'll post it.

I listened with incredulity to the end of Radio NZ's Morning Report interview on Thursday with a Dan Harris introduced as Pete Bethune's lawyer. I think I heard that Greenpeace had made sure he had lawyers. Are they acting for Greenpeace or Bethune? Presumably they've cleared any conflict of interest issues.

Or are Japanese sentencing criteria so unrecognisably different from ours that taunting a court (and a country) before sentencing works to reduce sentencing?

The interview first talked of plans to plead mitigating circumstances. Harris then went on to talk about sentencing on June 10. He said they plan to ask the court to "keep it all in perspective" assuming he is found guilty "and let him go – he's served enough time".

This was followed by discussion of prison conditions. Apparently no complaints.

Then the incredible comments – "He [Bethune] wants the world to know that he is glad he did what he did….he is very proud of what he has been able to accomplish… One of the first things he said to me when I met with him today was "its all been worth it and he would do it again".

A New Zealand judge would be almost bound to impose deterrent and denunciatory penalties, and perhaps even a protective  (incapacitatory) sentence in the face of such public absence of regret, and intention to reoffend.

If our consular officials are putting any sginificant effort into trying to help Bethune, if there has been an inclination by our government to try to help secure a light penalty, it would seem to me to be a waste of time  when his own lawyer seems to have instructions to do whatever can be done to outrage the court and maximise the penalty.

Perhaps it is deliberate – on some calculation that a "severe" sentence will make Bethune more of a martyr, and that will be worth what it costs him personally, in terms of the extra attention it will attract for the Japanese government, and extra embarassment for the New Zealand government if locals demand our government "do something" to Japan.

It might even work. My Greenpeace contributor friends and acquaintances do not have strong inclinations toward abstract reasoning. They'll interpret whatever happens to Bethune as an outrage, however calculatedly it has been invited.

Top Public Servant Acquitted of Punching Son – another inexcusable intrusion on free speech and the principle that justice should be delivered in open courts, where we can form our own views about whether it is without fear or favour according to rank and connections.

This decision satisfies none of the excuses for leaving the country's insiders to know who was charged, and thankfully acquitted. If he had not been forced into looking abject to succeed the man acquitted should be out there celebrating publicly and proud of himself . He should have opposed name suppression himself.

All those likely to know the man well enough to affect his career and his life will know who he is. I know and I'm not even in the court lawyer gossip circle. Given who he is, the decision supports suspicion of the justice establishment looking after its own, in collusion with the Police. Those in power always like knowing things that outsiders don't and use their power symbolically to emphasize that they know things others can not even where the knowledge is out.

Open justice must be restored, from the time of charging.

There may be a few grounds for suppressing the name of people charged with crime:

a) a blameless victim asks for it in circumstances where revealing the name would add materially to the victims long term suffering;

b) as a temporary order to avoid material prejudice to the investigation and prosecution of another;

c) during the time to trial where it could lead to the person charged suffering irreversible harm that will not occur if the person is acquitted;

d) if national security demands suppression of it among other details of the case.

I feel ashamed that I will not publicly disclose who this acquitted man is, to help make unworkable the continuation of this offense to our liberties. I'll not put myself and my license to be a lawyer at risk .  Many heroes who secured our liberties did risk all to get free speech and open justice.

But there is something I can do. Whale Oil is standing up for the principle. Despite often finding his language and expression gratuitously unpleasant, I can help make the point by reducing his personal cost of standing up for the rest of us.  We who are too careful can salve our consciences with contributions. If we make it plain that fines and other penalties will just attract mass support, eventually our would-be masters will have to accept the loss of their current power to suppress.

I'll find out the account we can contribute to and provide the link for others who want to contribute.

Property for Industry was right to complain about having to downgrade investor protection in its Constitution. A Stock Exchange should be able to stipulate minimum standards of protection and homogeniety in the products it auctions, to minimise investor search costs.

But there is no need to deprive shareholders of the power to stipulate for more protection than the minimum?

So why did the NZX do this?

The Listing Rules are the standard, and the standard is the brand, but NZX gave control of its brand to politicians seven years ago.

So listing rules are now treated as subordinate legislation, under power granted by the state.

For 150 years listing rules were the outcome of balancing by the auction house of the interests of its two vital classes of customer (investor and company promoter). The balancing was done by brokers who owned the auction house, as part of the natural resolution of conflicting interests that  intermediaries of all stripes can not avoid. They always have conflicting interests. They're paid to subject themselves to those conflicts. How they resolve them dictates whether they thrive or wither. That dynamic balance constantly adjusts as the intermediaries percieve risks to the continuation of their business from unhappiness by one class or the other, from a shift of the pendulum too far in one direction.

It is less effective as a corrective during periods when there is no choice of exchanges (or club of intermediaries). But it has become clear around the world that there is enormous potential for competition to be an Exchange.

Since NZX accepted the Faustian bargain of subordinating its rule-book to the State, it has acquired the habits and manners of a satrap to the ruler, not an intermediary. It is not free to fine tune rules (despite it becoming clear that they have discouraged listing). It has to negotiate changes with the Minister's officials. So it seems not to have tried.

Of course a Minister's incentives are dramatically different from those of an intermediary which must keep both sides happy enough to continue dealing. The Minister's main risk is bad media. So the political (ruler's) influence is asymetric. He'll suffer if some punter has a newsworthy complaint about a loss or disappointment that could have been averted with a rule in the Minister's power to impose.

He'll not be held accountable for rules that drive away listings or chill director willingness to take profitable risks. Nor will he likely reap much credit for rules that foster growth in an Exchange. Those who propose them will get that. A Minister suffers little if he leaves in place rules that  result in directors putting more energy into arse covering compliance processes than into assessing and taking risks to make money for their companies and their shareholders.

And so we have sorry mistakes persisting, like the  Australian model continuous disclosure rules that are unsuitable for most companies of the size we would like to see maturing to listing.

Property for Industry will shortly have a choice. NZX may get the power to start markets where the rule book isoutside the Minister's control. That poses a risk for NZX and the Minister, if investors think that any NZX market remains covered by the de facto Ministerial guarantee.

Or Property for Industry could move to Unlisted which is clearly not hitchhiking on any de facto guarantee of state prescription of its rule book. . And Unlisted should now crank up its rule making to stipulate the kinds of quality standards that meld the needs of investors and companies.

Disclosure – I have a shareholding in Unlisted and have acted professionally for it (and for the NZ Stock Exchange)