David Tkachuk Has No Moral Authority to Criticize Brigette DePape

In the Toronto Star this morning Senator David Tkachuk lights into Brigette DePape, and those who call her actions heroic.

How dare he?

Mr. Tkachuk represents everything that is wrong with our current Senate. A crony appointment of Brian Mulroney's, who was brought on board to help the fortunes of his government, eventually toppled by corruption.

Not the first time for Tkachuk. He was a personal advisor to Grant Devine, former Premier of Saskatchewan, whose government was so corrupt, several MLAs ended up in prison.

Two senators with ties to both Mulroney and Devine, were eventually led out of the Senate in handcuffs.

Let's take a little stroll down memory lane with this high and mighty senator, shall we? Like the CBC piece: From politics to prison in Saskatchewan, broadcast February 8, 1999.

It discusses the "bad actors" of Devine's neoconservative government, including David Tkachuk, first appearing at the 4:40 mark of the tape. He is described as a "mean drunk" and many MLAs claimed to "hate his guts". It is also said that he once accosted the daughter of a Tory MLA, and ripped the blouse off another young female politician.

You can also check out some of the Hansard records of the Saskatchewan Legislature where they question what he does to earn $350 per day (in 1984), and also raise the alarm over his travel expenses.

But he had been instrumental in getting this gang of thugs elected, so when Mulroney called him to join the Senate, it was because he needed advice on how to get a corrupt government re-elected. Tkachuk failed because they were reduced to two seats.

This man is nothing but a hyperpartisan bully and like the idealistic Jack Wolfe, who got a glimpse of the ugly side of politics, Brigette DePape, no doubt went into her job believing that she would be at the hub of Canadian democracy.

What she saw instead was an unelected senate, overturn bills passed by elected parliamentarians, without so much as a backward glance. And she met two senators who may land in jail because of their involvement with the Conservative election financing scheme.

And she saw Stephen Harper treat both Parliament and the Senate as his own posse, doing the exact opposite of what Canadians wanted or needed, to fill the pockets of the Corporate execs.

So no Mr. Tkachuk, Ms DePape did not dishonour our institutions. You and your cronies are doing that everyday. And she does not have to go to Afghanistan to learn about democracy, because she could teach you more on the subject than you could ever know.

I will forgive his comment about the Senate that "men with all their frailties do all they can to preserve."

It is not his misogyny that this young woman exposed, and it has nothing to do with her defying an oath.

She forced him, and others like him, to look in the mirror.

And they will never forgive her for that.

A bit of background on Grant Devine and the Saskatchewan Government and the Mulroney Connection.

Brian Mulroney Continued: Marjory LeBreton and Entitlement to Taxpayers Purse

Tom Lukiwski and the Real Saskatchewan Scandal

Tom Lukiwski, Grant Devine and the Religious Right

Tom Lukiwski: From Mouseland to Dirty Rats

RCMP: The Illegitimacy of Democracy and the Erosion of Public Trust

The Deficit Cure: Acupuncture or Shock Therapy?

When the neoconservative movement in Canada first appeared on the radar of many journalists, it was tied to the administrations of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Both of these leaders launched aggressive attacks on the welfare state, and left devastation in their paths.

Grant Devine in Saskatchewan, Ralph Klein in Alberta and Mike Harris in Ontario, all sought to experiment with the Thatcher/Reagan theories in their respective provinces.

On the federal scene, the Reform Party had their ideology in check, and were just waiting for their turn.

At the time, Thatcher and Reagan were not on tour, so Canada's neocons were taught strategy by New Zealand politician, Roger Douglas.

He held information seminars, speaking to the Harris caucus in Ontario, with Tony Clement, John Baird and Jim Flaherty in attendance; and Klein's in Alberta, indoctrinating Stockwell Day.

But the most important lecture, when it comes to the future of Canada, was presented to the Reform Party of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper, at their 1991 Assembly.

Douglas was introduced by Preston Manning, the only assembly speaker to be so honoured. And Manning told the delegates: There are three basic reasons why we have invited Sir Roger Douglas to be with us ... and three reasons why Reformers should pay close attention to what he has to say ... Sir Roger is an authority in fiscal reform and has advocated and promoted many of the fiscal reforms ... He is not only a reformer in word, he is a reformer in deed. Sir Roger deregulated the financial sector, phased down agricultural and other subsidies .. phased out import controls and drastically reduced tariffs levels. He instituted a 10% flat rate consumption tax (GST)*, with virtually no exemptions ... (1)

And Roger Douglas's most important message to his followers was "don't blink". Once you start cutting, keep going.

And if you developed a case of blepharospasm, uncontrollable eye blinking, a little acupuncture would fix you right up.

Because what Douglas failed to mention was how his policies affected New Zealand.

Dr. John Warnock, travelled to New Zealand to study the effects of what New Zealanders dubbed 'Rogernomics.' The figures tell a story of devastation - a word used by New Zealand's own agricultural minister to describe the state of agriculture in four years after the 'reforms': A 40 per cent drop in farm income; a 50 per cent drop in the value of farm land; a policy of paying 3,000 farmers incentives of $ 45,000 to leave and the suggestion that another 15,000 (out of 79,000) should follow them. Unemployment, which had been at 4 per cent before Douglas's reforms, jumped to over 12 per cent in just over a year and is still increasing.

"Douglas completely eliminated regional development grants and subsidies to rural services. Says Warnock, 'They had things like subsidized petroleum - regardless of where you were the price was the same - subsidized train service, bus service, airport service. They privatized all these things and the prices immediately skyrocketed.' A massive de-population of the countryside resulted, and approximately 40,000 New Zealanders per year have since left the country for Australia to find work ... (1)

He should have blinked.

Shock Therapy

While Roger Douglas may present us with a little trip down memory lane, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty will probably forgo acupuncture for shock therapy.

This is the remedy prescribed by Milton Friedman, and articulated at places like the Fraser Institute. Friedman believed in taking advantage of disasters, like Katrina, but when none presented themselves, they could simply be created.

His most famous induced disaster, was the Chilean experiment.

In 1970, when a socialist, Salvador Allende, was elected president, many of Chile's elite, were not pleased.

Allende, a physician by training, understood the cost that malnutrition imposed upon the poor and set out to alleviate the grinding poverty in which so many Chileans were trapped. He ensured that every Chilean schoolchild had access to at least a half-liter of milk each day, and that their parents had access to jobs and the means to feed and educate their children. Median incomes began to rise dramatically in the first two years of Allende's term.

To pay for these social programs designed to create opportunities for the poor, rich Chileans who had lived all their lives off of rents, dividends and interest and who had never paid a dime in taxes, found themselves paying taxes for the first time and being forced to morally justify their lives of luxurious leisure at the expense of the poor. They didn't like it one bit. And they began to complain to their friends in Washington. (2)

Fortunately for them Washington was already aware of the situation, and with the help of several corporations, engineered a coup to oust Allende and place the murderous Augustus Pinochet in the presidential palace.

Friedman then took over, encouraging Pinochet to implement "shock therapy" on the people of Chile.

Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy—tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation. Eventually, Chileans even saw their public schools replaced with voucher-funded private ones. It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, since so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman at the University of Chicago. Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that "facilitate the adjustment." He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment." In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy," has been the method of choice. (3)

And though Friedman and his Chicago School are still being hailed as heroes by Neoliberals/Neoconservative/Free Marketeers everywhere, his remaking of Chile was an absolute failure.

.. The country's period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success, did not begin until the mid-eighties, a full decade after the Chicago Boys implemented shock therapy and well after Pinochet was forced to make a radical course correction.

That's because in 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile's economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent—ten times higher than it was under Allende. The main cause was that the piranhas, the Enron-style financial houses that the Chicago Boys had freed from all regulation, had bought up the country's assets on borrowed money and run up an enormous debt of $14 billion.

The situation was so unstable that Pinochet was forced to do what Allende had done: he nationalized many of these companies. In the face of the debacle, almost all the Chicago Boys lost their influential government posts. (4)

So despite the fact that both of these experiments in economic reform were catastrophes, we know that it will not change Flaherty's or Harper's ideology.

Canadians will probably be subjected to a little "shock" in the upcoming budget, or if not then, in the not too distant future. The convoluted belief being that if we associate pain with social programs, we will not be too quick to want to reintroduce them (Friedman was a nut), especially if they convince us that they have been replaced with something better.

Poverty being good for the soul.

So slap on the electrodes boys. I'm ready.

Footnotes:

*The Reform Party was conflicted about the GST, with most wanting it scrapped if they came to power. Harper himself convinced them to keep the GST but eliminate any exemptions.

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 113-114

2. Free Market Fundamentalism: Friedman, Pinochet and the "Chilean Miracle", By Scott Bidstrup

3. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8, Pg. 8

4. Klein, 2007, Pg. 123

RCMP: The Illegitimacy of Democracy and the Erosion of Public Trust

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state." Carl Jung

When William Elliot was named as new RCMP Commissioner in July of 2007, it raised more than a few eyebrows. (1)

And it was not simply for the fact that he was a career bureaucrat, with no police experience, but because he was a Conservative insider, an old crony from Brian Mulroney's days. In fact his brother Richard was married to Brian Mulroney's sister. It's hard to get anymore inside than that.

He was around during the days of the Giga Text scandal, that helped to bring down the Saskatchewan government, something I've written about before. Stevie Cameron, in her book On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, identifies Elliot's position and also reports on a real estate deal that she included as part of that scandal.

It was at this point that Montpetit and GigaText entered into an interesting real estate deal. Bill Elliott, the Regina lawyer, was a senior partner at McPherson Elliott and Tyreman, a leading law firm in the city. The firm's offices occupied a two-storey building in a suburb. The wealthy Hill family wanted to build an office tower in downtown Regina and went to Elliott for a large loan because he was chairman of the provincially run Saskatchewan Pension Funds. Elliott helped them win approval for the loan, and as soon as the tower was up, Elliott's law firm leased two floors. Sixty per cent of the building was rented to the provincial government for offices. Then the law firm sold its old two-storey building to the Hill family for $1.75 million, an excellent price for the firm. The Hill family needed tenants for the old building, too, and fortunately GigaText appeared just in time to fill the space. The lease arrangement made everyone happy. (2)

Nothing illegal, but the optics were damaging none the less, and lent itself to an overall distrust.

Stephen Harper appointed him "to clean up the RCMP", after the damaging tenure of Giuliano Zaccardelli, who not only tampered with the 2006 election, but was also named in pension fraud allegations. The Harper government went well beyond the limits of their powers, to protect Zaccardelli, the man who had handed them their election victory.

But it soon became clear that Elliot was not appointed to "clean up" anything. He was there to go after those who blew the whistle, and what he created was chaos. As James Travers reports:

Controversial when announced in 2007, Harper’s choice of a bureaucrat with no policing experience and a Tory background is now an embarrassment with implications stretching beyond Canada. Elliott’s dictatorial management style and the resulting mutiny are focusing unwanted domestic and international attention on the shaky leadership of this country’s security services. (3)

And what was also clear, was that Stephen Harper was politicizing the RCMP and bringing them under his control. A dangerous act in a democracy, as a letter by David Hutton of Ottawa suggests:

Only tinpot Third World countries — and Canada — have their national police force reporting directly to the government of the day. ... Most developed countries ensure that the police have an arms-length relationship with politicians, in order to uphold the law impartially, without political interference or favour. Yet our Mounties report to a minister and brief him regularly on what they are doing — just as if the RCMP were a government department. No doubt the Mounties also receive regular guidance on their priorities — just like a government department does. (4)

And the RCMP has become a political nightmare, as Elliot played the role of a partisan politician, and not as an officer of what should have remained an arms length agency.

There is a shakeup at the top of the RCMP as senior officers who complained about Commissioner William Elliott's style last summer are quitting or being forced out, CBC News has learned. Deputy commissioner Raf Souccar has been asked to leave the force, with trust cited as the reason. And deputy commissioner Tim Killam has given notice that he will retire in December.

Assistant commissioner Mike McDonell, who left the RCMP in August, wrote to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews last week, saying those who came forward last summer "have simply become sacrificial lambs." Senior RCMP officers complained about Elliott to some of the highest levels of the federal government on two occasions in July. They accused Elliott, who became the first civilian to head the Mounties in July 2007, of being verbally abusive, closed-minded, arrogant and insulting. (5)

Which brings us to why Elliot showed up at the G-20. Was it he who instructed the troops to make security a secondary consideration? Were they told that their primary job was to stifle dissent? To attack peaceful protesters?

After all, he works for Stephen Harper, and learned how to play the game as a Mulroney crony.

A senior Mountie commander told the federal government that RCMP Commissioner William Elliott “disrupted” the federal government’s billion-dollar security operation for the G8 and G20 summits – simply by showing up for the events. “Despite being advised not to attend the summit command centres on June 25, 2010, the commissioner chose to attend, and in doing so, completely disrupted operations,” Mike McDonell, then an RCMP assistant commissioner, wrote in a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. (6)

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs." William Orville Douglas

Sources:

1. New RCMP boss vows to rise above lack of police experience, CBC News, July 6, 2007

2. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 254

3. Failed experiment dooms RCMP boss, By James Travers, Toronto Star, October 21, 2010

4. Politicized RCMP represents danger, Letters to the Editor, By David Hutton, Toronto Star, October 20, 2010

5. Top RCMP officers forced out or quitting: They complained about Commissioner Elliott's leadership style, CBC News, October 18, 2010

6. RCMP boss hurt G20 security efforts: letter from senior Mountie, By Colin Freeze and Daniel LeBlanc, Globe and Mail, October 19, 2010

The American Enterprise Institute and Canada's Neoconservatism/Religious Right

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The American Enterprise Institute is one of a myriad of think tanks that have become part of the infrastructure of the neoconservative/Religious Right movement.

One of the oldest, it was established in 1943, as a spokesperson for big business. Ronald Reagan once stated:

"The American Enterprise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part. AEI's remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks – and none has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute." (1)

However, the fortunes of the AEI have fluctuated depending on who was in power, enjoying their greatest success under the Bush administration. George Bush pulled 20 staffers from AEI, including David Frum, the person who organized the Winds of Change, dedicated to uniting the right, and is now a voice in our own neoconservative government.

Frum was recently fired from the AEI for speaking out against the Republican Party, clearing showing just how "non-partisan" the group is. (2)

But AEI's ties to Canada go back further than Frum. They even influenced the Saskatchewan government of Grant Devine:

The new right's attack on the welfare state included a moral component contributed by the new Christian right, which claims to find sanction for private enterprise economics in the Bible. A good example of this approach comes from Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute: "I advise intelligent, ambitious, and morally serious young Christians and Jews to awaken to the growing dangers of statism. They will better save their souls and serve the
cause of the Kingdom of God all around the world by restoring the liberty and power of the private sector than by working for the state."' The private sector
would not only make you rich, it would save your soul.

Believing as it does that the Bible endorses individual self-reliance, the new right asserts that the solution to society's problems — whether economic or social — is fundamentally moral. (3)

Michael Novak has also spoken at the Fraser Institute and according to Lloyd Mackey has influenced the thinking of Stephen Harper. (4)

Those belonging to the group definitely represent the far-right, including Dick Cheney, his wife Lynn Cheney, William Kristol and Richard Perle.

But what's important and something we need to take note of in Canada is that recently the AEI has begun to attack NGOs.

In June 2003, AEI and another right-wing group, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, launched a new website NGOWatch.org/NGOwatch.org
to expose the funding, operations and agendas of international NGOs, and particularly their alleged efforts to constrain U.S. freedom of action in international affairs and influence the behavior of corporations abroad. AEI states that "The extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies, as well as the effectiveness of credible NGOs." Ralph Nader responds with "What they are condemning, with vague, ironic regulatory nostrums proposed against dissenting citizen groups, is democracy itself." (1)

Sources:

1. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, By Source Watch

2. American Enterprise Institute: Now With 100% Less Frum, Around the Sphere, March 26, 2010

3. Privatizing a Province: The New Right in Saskatchewan, By: James M. Pitsula and Ken Rasmussen, New Star Books, 1990, ISBN: 0-921586-10-8, Pg. 7

4. The Pilgramage of Stephen Harper, By: Lloyd Mackey, ECW Press, 2005, ISBN: 10-1-55022-713-0 , Pg. 94 and 209