Of Top 50 Tax Money Abusers, 47 Were Conservatives

Reports are circulating about this government's abuse of tax money, and one of them is of special interest to me.

These damn ten percenters.

A Chronicle Herald analysis of the expenses shows that 47 of the top 50 spenders on "ten percenters" in 2009-10 were Conservative MPs. Ten percenters
are political mail outs paid for by the House of Commons. The secretive all-party board of internal economy decided this spring to stop MPs from sending mailouts to other ridings.

The practice, which was mostly used by Conservative MPs, drew complaints from voters and opposition MPs because most of the mailings were aimed at attacking opposition MPs over such issues as the gun registry

Gordon O'Connor tried to defend this abuse by saying that his MPs used the program to get their political message out. "We were organized and what we tried to do was get the government message out into the ridings that we didn’t hold" ....

"The government message"?

I live in the Liberal riding of peter Milliken and I've received 13 of these so-called messages this year. They included one quoting Michael Ignatieff in 1991 saying that the government might have to raise taxes to fight the deficit. Another reminded me that Ignatieff once referred to himself as a Samurai Warrior. Several were reminders that ignatieff was "Just visiting".

And those not attacking the Liberal leader, included one promising that the Conservatives were committed to making our plane travel more comfortable (extra peanuts?) and that they were going to protect our cars from theft (clubs designed after John Baird's mouth?)

This was not government messaging, it was Conservative Party propaganda. Nothing more, nothing less. And we paid for it.