Well the S.O.B. Did it. Canada Officially Out of Kyoto

The US announced their energy strategy in 2001 which was largely developed by Vice-President Dick Cheney and the large fossil fuel and nuclear industry companies. Capitalizing on the California energy crisis, which had been brought on by the market manipulations of another close Bush crony, Enron’s Ken Lay, the US Administration called for more of everything — coal, oil, gas, nukes. The only energy item excluded was energy conservation. As Cheney said, “While conservation may be a personal virtue, it has no place in an energy strategy.” Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources at the time, Ralph Goodale, commented that conservation was an essential part of the energy planning of “any intelligent society.” Where will the US find the vast amounts of energy it demands for its massively inefficient and polluting economy? George W. Bush has stated, “We’ve got a plan to make sure that gas comes — flows freely out of Canada into the United States.” (The Energy Onslaught: The Impact of the Bush-Cheney Energy Plan on Canada’s Wilderness. the Sierra Club)

If then energy minister Ralph Goodale, was challenging Dick Cheney by promoting conservation, what was the climate change denial industry going to do?

In her book It's the Crude, Dude; Linda McQuaig discusses the debate around Kyoto. Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration of course hated it, but they also hated any talk of conservation, something Cheney sneered at.  McQuaig reveals how a Canadian anti-Kyoto group sprang up overnight, sponsored by the oil companies, to defend Dick Cheney's position. (p. 133)

Some of Ernie Eves’s top cabinet ministers partied last week with Kyoto-bashers the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions, a lobby group with close ties to both Ralph Klein and the energy industry ... It took place in the Queen’s Park dining hall and was a very chummy shrimp-and-wine gathering, a chance for members of the coalition -- the Canadian Association of Oil Well Drilling Contractors, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, etc -- to schmooze Tory heavies.

There were speeches by coalition organizers, and a particularly passionate Ontario energy minister, John Baird, made his anti-Kyoto rallying cry. Needless to say, the audience was very receptive. Baird’s parliamentary assistant, Scarborough MPP Steve Gilchrist*, who at one time helped block developers’ plans for the Oak Ridges Moraine, was busy propping open doors with chairs to give relief to a very hot and stuffy room. I couldn’t help remarking to him that perhaps the room was so unbearably hot because of climate change. He was not amused.

While Eves has been slightly slippery on just where he stands on Kyoto, it was interesting to learn that this meeting was organized by Guy Giorno, Mike Harris’s old chief of staff and ultimate Tory party insider. Giorno now works with National Public Relations (NPR), the coalition’s high-priced lobby firm. (Big Oil's Kyoto Party: Harris whiz kid pulls strings at wine and shrimp fete, By Josh Matlow, NOW Magazine, October 24, 2002)

A decade ago John Baird and Harper's former chief of staff, Guy Giorno, were sweating at a shrimp fete and rallying the climate change deniers.

The Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions, was an AstroTurf group created by Giorno and funded by the industry that he lobbied for.

Given that we have had a decade of this nonsense, is it any surprise that Canada is backing out of Kyoto?

The only problem with the billboard at the Copenhagen climate conference, is that Stephen Harper will never, ever, ever, say he's sorry for anything.  His job is to make as much money as possible for the oil industry, and he's doing that job.

I just wish he'd do the one he was elected to do and start standing up for the people of Canada.  We already have enough black eyes, did he need to give us a bloody nose and fat lip too?

The sad thing is that in their search for "balance" the media will somehow make this a good thing, allowing the figures that Harper has pulled out of his butt, to stand as fact.  I wish they'd remember that this is their country too, not to mention their planet.

*Steve Gilchrist was the former boss of Harper MP Paul Calandra

Ann Coulter is Not a "Free Speech Heroine". She's an Idiot.

I must admit that I had never heard Ann Coulter speak, but have read many of the things she has written. Certainly no intellectual, but if I understand correctly, she is a comedian, akin to a shock jock.

Bill Maher had her on as a guest this week and my "shock" was not in her anticipated "hate speech", but in how ignorant she is, or at least acts.

Coulter was blaming the current debt crisis in the U.S., on medicare and social security. When pressed about the wars and the extension of the Bush tax cuts, she declared that they had nothing to do with the current debt.

WHAT???

No. Apparently, the sick and the elderly are to blame.

Not expensive wars or corporate tax cuts. Not the bailing out of Wall Street.

Ezra Levant, that chick magnate, is smitten with Ann Coulter, and interviewed her recently on Fox News North, opening the segment with scenes of an "angry mob", protesting Coulter's intended visit to the University of Ottawa.

Although Levant prefers to use the terms "Demonic Mob" and "Mad Mob".

In the photo above, the young man in the background, with the red eyes, is not part of a demonic mob", but young neocon, Michael Sona, a Conservative staffer.

Sona was the activist who tried to steal the ballot box at the University of Guelph.

The votes in that box were allowed to stand, but it had the desired effect, because Sona's actions resulted in a ruling that no other special ballot polling stations, similar to the one in Guelph, would be authorized anywhere else in Canada during the campaign.

Controlled controversy 101.



In the above segment Coulter and Levant discuss the mob mentality, with Coulter suggesting that the only violence, or threats of violence, come from the left wing.

Obviously she hasn't been watching the Tea Party protests, where one man carried this sign.



Coulter also claimed that only the left will compare right-wingers to Nazis and/or other dictators. Again she needs to get out more.




Even Canada's Sun Media jumped on the bandwagon.



Of course, the intent is not to have us believe what they are saying. They know it's not true but it doesn't matter. The devotees will believe it's true and they need to keep them angry and loyal. 'Don't be ashamed of those thoughts because we agree. We're just like you'.

Classic Karl Rove.

And Karl Rove's counterpart, Guy Giorno, has advised the same to Stephen Harper. Protect that "base" at any cost, even if it means appearing stupid.

Mob Mentality

In a bit of an intellectual aside, Coulter brings up Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist, sociologist and author of A Study of the Popular Mind. Without really going into his study, she simply suggests that he has the demonic left-wing mob mentality down pat.

Viewers swooned. She speaks French.

Le Bon suggested that the mob will take on the intellect of the lowest among them.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.(A Study of the Popular Mind, By: Gustave Le Bon, Book One: The Mind of Crowds)

It should be noted that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda mastermind, read Le Bon religiously, to reach to the lowest in Germany, and Mussolini kept a copy of A Study of the Popular Mind beside his bed.

Le Bon's biggest fears were realized, because he was concerned that in the wrong hands, the book could be used as a guideline to manipulate the masses for the lesser good, and indeed it was.

I can't help thinking that that is exactly what Fox News North and its big brother Fox News is attempting here. Reach out to the worst of people, and the worst in people.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the Nazi trials at Nuremberg for the American press, and remarked on how "Unimaginative, ordinary and unthinking" they were.

Others may have hoped to see Bluebeard in the dock, she wrote, but for her, the horror lay in the fact that "there were so many like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic ... [but] terribly and terrifyingly normal." She was one of the first to refute the "monster theory" of less-than-human Nazis. ( Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, By Erna Paris, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, ISBN: 0-676-97251-9, P. 318)

And yet there were many PhDs in the party.

But to do what they did required ignorance, not intellect. A numbing of the masses, so the worst could dictate the actions of all.

In that atmosphere, hatred goes mainstream, and we all become desensitized to it.

Bombings, human rights abuses, war crimes.

Shrug.

“Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.” Gustave Le Bon

"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the “remaking” of the Reich ..." Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

Ken Boessenkool May Not Pass the Smell Test But What About Guy Giorno?

Glen McGregor writes in the Ottawa Citizen today: Lobbyists trying their luck, Talking Points

Amid controversy over the role of lobbyists in this election, the Conservatives have finally acknowledged that a former top aide to Stephen Harper who later became a high-powered lobbyist is helping run the party's campaign.

Harper's former policy adviser, Ken Boessenkool, was photographed by the Citizen arriving at the Conservative "war room" on Lancaster Road in Ottawa's east end Monday morning. He had an ID pass and lanyard around his neck. Later in the day, the party said Boessenkool was a member of senior campaign staff involved in "overall messaging" work.

This was news because Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd, had cautioned lobbyists that campaigning for parties could constitute a conflict-of-interest.

But if we're going to raise concerns about Boessenkool, why not Guy Giorno, who is running the campaign? Admittedly, he may no longer be a registered lobbyist, but you can be sure still keeps contact with, National Public Relations, the top lobbyist for the Tar Sands, where Giorno once hung his hat.

Lobbyists move in and out of Harper's office, so realizing that they are now running his campaign is not really news.

What else would we expect from the Corporate Party of Canada?

Lawrence Martin is Right Mr. Harper. Canada is Not a Police State ... Yet!

The image above is of an 88-year-old woman who was brutalized and arrested during the protests against the closing of the Prison Farms in Kingston. Harper brought in the riot squads. Absolutely unnecessary.

We already knew that the Harper government was using our tax dollars to keep track of us on Facebook and other social media sites. But the revelation that the RCMP is screening Facebook to remove "undesirables" (non-supporters of Harper) from Conservative rallies, is over the top. We pay their salary, not him. And we pay them to protect us, not stalk us.

Lawrence Martin has an excellent column: By the way prime minister, this is not a police state

A very good read.

I love the new Liberal ad. This is what they have to keep doing. Simple but to the point messages. This one couldn't be any clearer.

Jason Lietaer and Stephen Harper's Tea Party Campaign Not Going so Well

I watched Power and Politics yesterday, something I haven't done in quite awhile, and despite the fact that the whole 'reckless coalition' mantra is tanking, Harper's communication point man, Jason Lietaer, suggested that it would continue to be at the center of their campaign.

A big mistake.

It took just two days for the media, with the help of Gilles Duceppe, to nullify. Stephen Harper did indeed try to become Prime Minister in 2004, with the full support of the Bloc. Duceppe is far more credible on this because he not only has the original letter, but also video and Tom Flanagan's book. It's time to move on.

This only validates what Harper's critics have said all along. That he is deceitful.

It took a lot of courage for Duceppe to go public with this, because across Quebec people are saying "you've get to get rid of Harper", so admitting that he was once prepared to be kingmaker for him is a risky move. It's also interesting that Jack Layton is stepping away from it, despite the fact that he was key to both coalitions, and instead is allowing Michael Ignatieff to shoulder all of the "blame".

But I don't want to talk about the "C" word because it's enough already. On the weekend Gilles Duceppe referred to Stephen Harper's Tories 'as a retrograde Tea Party', and I think that's one of the things the other parties should focus on.

Not only on Harper's long and deep connections with the Republican Tea Party, but his style of campaigning. Stick to a few talking points and hammer them home. This might work in the U.S. where their battle cry is "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", but in Canada, we follow the creed of "Peace, Order and Good Government".

In his five years, Harper has made no attempt to be peaceful, orderly or to provide good government. Instead it has been just a never ending election campaign, much of it at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer. His caucus rarely answer questions in the House, preferring to be glib and stick to their scripts. They have a 200 page manual instructing them on how to make committees dysfunctional, to avoid accountability. And they have a vetting system for handling access to information, that would rival Joseph Goebbel's.

So pitting himself against the other parties in such a manner, only validates what his critics have said all along. That he is impossible to deal with. I also found his choice of those to lead his campaign interesting. Guy Girorno, a corporate lobbyist, who once choreographed Ontario Premier Mike Harris's every move, and Jason Lietaer, another lobbyist and Mike Harris top aide.

It was once thought that Lietaer might replace Kory Teneycke as what Kady O'Malley called Director of Uncomfortable Silences. Even Jane Taber, top Harper cheerleader, listed him as one of the lobbyists in Harper's revolving door.

Which only validates what Harper's critics have said all along. That his government is run by corporate lobbyists.

This brings me to the second talking point of this campaign. That "only Stephen Harper can lead us to economic stability". They cite the fact that we did better than most countries during the collapse, despite the fact that many in the financial world agree that it was only because of measures put in place by the former government, many of which have since been torn down by Harper and Co. However, it would appear that our economic prowess was only in the short term. Many other countries are now leaving us in their dust.

That could have something to do with the fact that we were the only ones who saw the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "aren't we doing a great job" ads and signs, instead of focusing on the actual economic strength of recovery.

The Montreal Gazette gives us a Reality 'cheque': Harper's claims on the economy

- Canada's economy has been improving, but not at the same rate as the leading economies. Australia and Sweden are expected to lead in economic improvement in 2011, according to the report

- "Any likely post-election government can also be expected to stay on a course aimed at deficit reduction, with only the specific mix of spending and tax policy priorities under real debate."

- The Harper government increased program spending faster than the inflation rate. Between 2006-07 and 2008-09, program spending increased by an annual average of 5.1 per cent.

And the suggestion that only Stephen Harper can handle the economy, and not the Conservatives, validates yet another criticism, and perhaps the most important of them all.

Stephen Harper is a government on one. He listens to no one, not even the Canadian people.

It took just two days to tear down the entire Conservative strategy. They'd better change the channel soon because they've still got a long way to go.

What is Stephen Harper Possibly Going to Campaign On?

Stephen Harper has not had a good week. In fact he has not had a good several weeks, as his past his coming back to haunt him.

As an editorial in the Chronicle Herald asked:

WHAT’S the difference between a bad week in politics and an abysmal one? Bad is when you cough up the ball and give the opposition an issue to kick around for a while. Abysmal is when you hand it an entire narrative to play with.

The Harper government has certainly fumbled so badly over the past few days that its critics now harbour the hope of changing the ballot-box question ... It’s not that Canadians are overly perturbed that the Speaker of the House spanked the government this week for being economical with the truth (in the Bev Oda document-tampering fiasco) and for being miserly with the figures (on the cost of its tough-on-crime and corporate tax cut policies).

They also severely low-balled the cost of the F-35s. Planes we can't afford and that are deemed to be inadequate to meet our needs, since they are unsuitable for the Arctic.

They were also hoping to use the economy as their strong point, but handling our money is nothing they can boast about. We just got the bill for their latest self-promotion ad blitz, and it's a whopping 26 million dollars.

Again from the Chronicle Herald

NO WONDER the federal Conservatives are trying to steer public opinion toward their one perceived strong point — economic management. In a stunning series of events this week, Canada’s governing party has seen its reputation stained on issues on which it has staked its future.In the third of three blows — many more hooks and jabs had already weakened the government — a new report from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, whose post was established by the Conservatives to ensure “truth in budgeting,” says the total price tag for new F-35 fighter jets is close to $30 billion — nearly 70 per cent more than government estimates.

Not one to allow for questions about his work, Page had his report peer-reviewed by non-partisan experts at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Queen’s University.

How can they argue with that? Not that they won't try.

And Don Newman, in comparing the problems in the NHL with those of the Harper government says:

... the one with the greatest potential for destroying our way of life and central beliefs is the degeneration of Parliament and politics in general into a morass of phony election receipts, ultra-partisan tactics, altered documents, sleezy attack ads and outright untruths.

Stephen Harper is losing control and when he begins to lose control he always does something stupid.

Susan Delacourt believes that he may be focusing on Ontario, tapping into the Mike Harris crowd. He's hoping Rob Ford's butt scratching will give him the itch he needs, but in the process, will he alienate the West? He's lost five strong and experienced MPs from there.

Who knows? But this is the perfect opportunity to change the narrative and change the channel. This country is in trouble and it will only get worse the longer this crew is in power.

To Understand Stephen Harper is to Understand Arthur Finklestein

I have written before about Arthur Finklestein, the Republican pollster who worked with Stephen Harper and the National Citizens Coalition.

I was a little shocked when I first learned of this, because Finklestein was pretty high profile. Not a public icon like Karl Rove or to a lesser degree, Frank Luntz. Finklestein was more like Guy Giorno, preferring to operate in the shadows.

He handled the campaigns of controversial figures like Jesse Helms and Alfonse D'Amato, but his client list also included Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

He was no lightweight.

I'm currently reading Loyal to the Corp: Stephen Harper Me and the NCC, by Harper's former VP at the National Citizens Coalition, Gerrry Nicholls. Nicholls reveals the fact that Finklestein was employed by the NCC for 14 years, taking Harper under his (right) wing, and teaching him everything he knew. And he knew plenty.

Not about how to be a good leader, but how to demolish your political opponents.

Finklestein was king of the petty attack ad. The pettier the better, and Stephen Harper was a very good student.

The Legacy of Arthur Finklestein

In Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, he discusses Harper's visceral hatred for "L"iberals, though it's more of a visceral hatred for anything "l"iberal. It's almost an obsession.

In the United States Finklestein is credited with helping to make "liberal" a dirty word throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He did this by associating the word with anything negative.

"That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you."

Three times: liberal = "wrong" liberal = Jack Reed "too" liberal. The message is pretty clear.

But this one backfired:

"Paul Wellstone. Embarrassingly liberal. Decades out of touch."

He played it so often that a grassroots organization was formed to counter the ignorance and Wellstone won. Besides, it was 1990, after almost a decade of "out of touch" Reagan, so it failed to resonate.

We can do the same here, and in fact, I think the Conservative attack ads are beginning to wear on everyone. Wellstone's campaign is actually a good example of how to beat the right-wing nonsense. The senator from Minnesota died in a plane crash in 2002, along with his wife and daughter, but a group has been formed in his name:

Wellstone Action trains progressive citizens and potential candidates for public office, on how to "succeed in winning elections, enacting legislation, and passing ballot initiatives". I'm hoping we can mobilize as a progressive force this election, and turn this country around.

We saw how easy it was to recruit 225,000 Canadians, who opposed Stephen Harper's last self-serving prorogation, and more recently, 30 groups got together to oppose the "hush money" paid to Harper's "not so much an ethics czar as a sweeper under of rugs", who buried 50 allegations of fraud and misconduct against his government.

Pundits and pollsters are suggesting that the Conservative attack ads are working, citing recent poll results. But Harris-Decima chairman, Allan Gregg recently warned Canadians not to take too much stock in polls these days, admitting that "telephone surveys have fallen to 15 per cent -- partly because more people use cells, have call screening or just hang up."

The results are only based on a 15% success rate. And on-line polls represent the opinions of those who seeks out those polls, and hardly an accurate reading of the pulse of the nation.

Last month, we were on the brink of a Conservative majority: three separate polls said as much. Those attack ads on Ignatieff were hurting the Liberals. The fact that much of the Conservative surge was on the Prairies, where they already hold most of seats, was downplayed.

... Then there's highly imperfect reporting. Dutiful news stories will include the usual warnings in the final paragraph: this poll is reliable 19 times out of 20, with a margin of error of whatever. But television hosts, pundits, columnists (guilty) often ignore this excitement-killing nuance. One recent poll had the Tories moving from 38.1 per cent to 39.7 per cent and was widely reported as a "rise" in Tory support. But the fine print reports a margin of error of 3.1 per cent: in other words, the "gain" was statistically meaningless.

We just have to try and beat the right-wing at their own games. Not by making silly attack ads, but by reminding people of just how ridiculous they really are.

"Michael Ignaieff didn't come back for you". What is that supposed to mean?

I bought some voice distortion software and created an attack ad as it might appear in 1867, when Conservative John MacDonald (Sir John A.) was running against Liberal George Brown.

MacDonald had scoffed at Brown's prison reform, suggesting that conditions in the prison system were not that bad.

I thought it might go something like this.

Is Guy Giorno Already Having a Negative Impact at the University of Toronto?

When Guy Giorno resigned as Harper's chief of staff, so that a Bay street lobbyist could move in and ram the F-35's down our throats, he said it was because he wanted to "spend more time with family".

I laughed and laughed.

Almost immediately it was announced that he had taken a position with the university of Toronto and will be heading up Stephen Harper's ugly re-election campaign. (Giorno can only do ugly. He has even made nuns cry) Part of the neocon movement is to shift universities to the right.

But there is a little storm brewing over the Canadian Armed Forces recruitment on campus at the U of T. They claim they were invited.

“It’s an ethical duty to refrain from legitimizing military at a time when it’s been about 10 years now that Canadian military has been occupying Afghanistan,” said Jacob Nerenberg. Nerenberg, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, was one of the organizers of a Feb. 2 protest against military recruitment on the institution’s campus.

Another story we should be paying close attention to, as Stephen Harper is trying to make Canada the country of manly things. And yes I know women are in the military too, but we're all about guns and killing now.

It will take all of us to move this country back to the way it was before the five years of Steve.

Glass Shatterer? LMAO. Jenni Byrne is Stephen Harper's Jabba the Hutt

In 2003, at the national conference of the Civitas Society, Guy Giorno gave a presentation entitled "Transplanting Provincial Successes to Ottawa".

The Civitas is the policy arm of the Harper government and many members move back and forth. Ian Brodie, a director at Civitas, was formerly Harper's chief of staff, and many others, founding members of the Reform Party.

But Guy Giorno is a stickler for details, so when he spoke of "transplanting" the success of Ontario's Mike Harris, he meant transplanting every single thing.

So you might call it a "remake", where a script written in 1995, would be followed line by line. Only a few of the actors would be replaced.

If you google 'Guy Giorno and Ontario Legislature', you'll find that many of the complaints raised by the opposition then, are eerily similar to those being raised in federal Parliament today.

ORAL QUESTIONS: GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING, Ontario Hansard - October 28, 1998

Question: What you are doing is unprecedented. Your current $4-million spending spree is just the latest. It comes on top of millions spent on education propaganda. It comes on top of millions spent on wasted welfare propaganda. It comes on top of millions wasted on business propaganda. In total so far, and it's early going yet, early days yet, you have wasted over $42 million worth of taxpayers' money in a desperate attempt to save your own skins.

Minister, why should taxpayers be involved in this plot to fund your re-election campaign? Minister, you're wasting $42 million of taxpayer dollars on PC Party propaganda. It doesn't matter how you slice it and how you dice it, that's what it's all about. Let's understand what this would have meant in terms of health care dollars for patients: $42 million would have allowed you to hire almost 1,000 new nurses; $42 million would have allowed you to wipe out the entire deficit of the Ottawa Hospital, which right now stands at $41 million; $42 million would have allowed you to pay for your share of 40 MRIs desperately needed by communities right across this province; $42 million would have allowed you to pay for your full-year funding commitment to attract doctors to under serviced areas in communities right across the province. How can you justify wasting taxpayer dollars that ought to be devoted to health care and putting them into your campaign to re-elect Mike Harris?

Answer: There's nothing that I think is more important than communicating to the public about major changes that are taking place.

Feds spent $42M promoting stimulus spending, documents show, By Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen: April 27, 2010

Federal departments have spent nearly $42 million promoting the Harper government's economic stimulus programs. Documents introduced in Parliament
detail the massive wave of print, radio, TV and online advertising intended to highlight the Economic Action Plan launched in January 2009.The advertising blitz includes everything from $110,000 in newspaper ads for the Agriculture Department's slaughterhouse improvement program to the $44,000 spent to wrap two Go Transit commuter trains in the Toronto area with the distinctive green and blue EAP logo.

Critics charge that the promotion of the unprecedented government spending is a form of political advertising but the government defends the ads as critical to communicating with Canadians as the country navigates its way out of the economic downturn.

See. They are following a script, and a plot line. It now just involves a lot more money, with the Harper government spending 45 million on signs and over 100 million on self promotion ads. And it's not about to end anytime soon.

The Liberals have made a weekly event out of highlighting what they perceive to be wasteful spending measures on the part of the Conservative government. On Friday, the target of their ire was the half-million dollars the government spent on “partisan-style” backdrops from press conferences and meetings and $6.5-million promoting tax measures that were introduced in 2006.

“Following Haiti’s earthquake last year, rather than delivering aid as quickly as possible, the Conservative government wasted $27,000 on single-use backdrops, conveniently coloured Tory blue, when they were coordinating a response to the earthquake,” Liberal MP John McCallum told a news conference. “To put that in context, it’s about 55 times the income of the average Haitian.” Mr. McCallum also said the government spent $10,000 on backdrops to unveil the G8 logo. In total, he said, in just over a year, the government has spent more than $500,000 on backdrops alone. Documents explaining how he reached those figures are available here. And he pointed to a Globe and Mail Story published Thursday that said the government is spending $6.5-million of public funds to promote its tax-cutting record in an advertising campaign centred on what is shaping up as a key election issue.

In the private sector these actions would be called embezzlement. But in the neocon world it's business as usual.

One Actor Eliminated

The only thing different between the original movie How Guy Giorno Stole Millions From Taxpayers for Mike Harris and the remake How Guy Giorno Stole Millions From Taxpayers for Stephen Harper, is that they have eliminated one character. Deb Hutton and Leslie Noble from the original, are now embodied in the character of Jenni Byrne.

Like Guy Giorno, Leslie Noble was a top lobbyist who had her own gold plated cheque book. But she used to berate, ridicule and taunt elected MPPs, because she knew that she had more power than them. And she also kept them all election ready.

Noble has no official job with government but regularly briefs Harris, his cabinet ministers and Tory MPPs on what needs to be done politically to stay in power ... One pipeline [Leslie] Noble has to influence government decision-makers is the unelected cadre of political aides in the offices of the Premier and his top ministers. These aides, many of whom report to Noble during the election campaign, wield tremendous power in government, a reality acknowledged by some Tory MPPs. Tory backbencher Bill Murdoch says they openly flaunt their power. ``They say, `Hey Murdoch, we didn't even have to go through an election and we're running the place.' '' Queen's Park Speaker Chris Stockwell, a Tory MPP, calls them a "cabal'' and says they make decisions without input from elected politicians.

Jenni Byrne:

It has not gone unnoticed by some staffers that a hakapik, the weapon used to club to death baby seals, sits on her desk. “She has cultivated a reputation where most people are terrified of being on the wrong side of her,” says a senior Conservative official who knows her well. No wonder then that many of her colleagues who were interviewed for this article asked not to be identified. Ms. Byrne refused to be interviewed.

The other female character that has been absorbed by Byrne is Deb Hutton, now married to Tim Hudak, the man we have to make sure doesn't become our next premier in Ontario. Hutton was called Jabba the Hutt, because if you wanted to talk to Mike Harris you had to go through her, and few got through.

Meanwhile, Deborah Hutton, who remained as the premier's legislative assistant, was given the nickname "Jabba the Hutt" by ministerial aides terrified of her legendary tantrums. One of these aides, like those working for the Conservatives, was willing to be more specific, only on the condition of anonymity. According to the disgruntled staffer, Hutton was and remains "a one-person Blitzkrieg against party morale. (Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg. 170)

Jenni Byrne

Described by colleagues as possessing a volcanic temper with a penchant for yelling at cabinet ministers, staffers and senior bureaucrats alike, Ms. Byrne is fiercely loyal to the Prime Minister...

So to Gloria Galloway, do your homework. If you think Jenni Byrne is a ground breaker ... or glass breaker ... she's about 15 years too late. I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends. The leader resigns because of corruption, and when they are voted out of office, they leave not only a bare cupboard, but a province (and now a nation), with a record deficit and swimming in debt.

The Defrauding of Taxpayers II.

Common Sense and Hookers. How Mike Harris Stole my Vote

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

I came across something the other day, that I hadn't realized I had kept. (I really having to start throwing stuff away)

It was a videotape with a white cardboard cover, and the dire warning to 'View Before June 8' [1995]; the [former Ontario premier] Mike Harris's campaign video when he was flogging his so-called Common Sense Revolution.

So I popped it in the VCR last night, in an attempt to understand what drove me to vote for this party through their local candidate Bill Vancoughnet. And I realized that it was as much about the language used to sell it, as the product.

The art of ambiguity helped to mask their true intent.

Mind you at the time, few Canadians understood the concept of neoconservatism, so we trusted the basic good of the Canadian identity, not realizing that much of this campaign was imported from the United States.

The two key elements that were hammered out by Vancoughnet and Harris on the tape, were taxes and the reduction of government waste. They promised four billion dollars in "tax rebates", a much better choice of words than "tax reduction", since they imply a cheque in the mail.

They also promised to "eliminate the barriers to job creation" - the removal of environmental restrictions.

"Cut the size of government by involving the private sector" - costly and service reducing privatization

"Arms length involvement by eliminating red tape" - the removal of health and safety concerns.

Welfare Reform

In 1975, Andrew Armitage wrote one of the first comprehensive books on Canada's social welfare system, and he stated that the way that Canadians view welfare or social assistance, is not with an eye to eliminating it, only to making it fairer.

He said that it had to be about not simply a transfer of funds, but an "exchange". That is why we liked Harris's notion of Workfare. The able bodied expected to pull their weight.

But the way this was presented to Ontarians was fundamentally flawed, and yet Harris was able to sell it not only to the working class, but to those receiving assistance.

He flogged it to the first group as getting "those lazy bums off the couch", and to the latter, as finding them jobs. But what we got instead was one of the most vile attacks on struggling citizens in modern history.

They cut the welfare rolls in half and drastically reduced benefits. The McGuinty government has attempted to raise the rates since then, but they are still far below pre-1995 levels. Thousands of people were thrown into the streets as a result, many freezing to death in their cars or in allies. The use of food banks rose and for many it was a return to depression era conditions.

And the promised jobs never materialized. Those on assistance were told they had to work, but also had to find their own employment in an already overstretched job market.

But a handful of people got filthy rich. A neoconservative success story.

Transfers and Exchange

The Harrisites were able to find willing accomplices to their inhumane policies because of stories. We all knew some.

Like the cab drivers who told of welfare recipients using their taxi chits to have them deliver cigarettes. Or the single moms with eight kids receiving thousands of dollars a month. Or welfare cheques going for booze or drugs.

The stories were true but not as common as we were led to believe.

I recently spoke with a woman who has worked in the system for three decades. She remembers the Harris era well and said that she can't remember a day during that time, when she didn't feel sad. Many of her clients were axed and she worried about what became of them, fearing the worst.

And as to the lazy "welfare bums", she told me that most of her clients wanted to work and hated having to accept what they thought of as "charity".

But we allowed a few "cheats" to define the entire system, and few raised a hand to stop "Chainsaw Mike" (those who did felt the wrath of the "Riot Police", a common view in Harrisland).

So maybe it's time to tap into the notion of "transfer and exchange". What are we getting from our government in exchange for the enormous amounts of our money we entrust them with?

In Ontario back in the day, we entrusted John Baird with millions to fix the welfare problem. In exchange we got a boondoggle computer system that never worked, and a contract with Anderson Consulting of Enron fame, who charged us 4 to 1, what the job would have cost using a civil servant.

In exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure projects, transferred to the Harris government, we got signs, glossy pamphlets and self-promotion advertising. In other words, taxpayers funded his re-election campaign.

And yet we transferred the same hundreds of millions of dollars to the Harper government, for the same signs, pamphlets and self-promotion advertising.

We have also transferred billions to the war in Afghanistan and have no idea what we got in exchange. Or maybe we do. A request for more billions.

Ontarians were lured into complicity, because the Harris government focused on the cheats. Yet any system involving money is always open to exploitation.

And that includes John Baird billing us $61,000 for his vacation to Bali (since he did nothing to address climate change), or Tony Clement $11,000 to deliver a cheque that he could have mailed. Or Christian Paradis presenting a claim of $5,000 for an $800 coat.

Cheats are Cheats

We will now be transferring more funds to Stephen Harper for an extension of stimulus money, and what will we get in exchange? Nobody knows because nobody asks. Tom Walkom believes it is to help pay for Harper's re-election campaign, and has nothing to do with the jobs he's promising.

In fact, job figures are looking better, because many out of work Canadians are simply giving up. In exchange for this transfer of funds we should demand that the money go to areas hardest hit by unemployment, but we know it won't. It's going to the 905 in an attempt to buy 10 seats.

In the United States the Republicans have blocked plans to cancel further tax cuts for the richest Americans, while the U.S. unemployment rate remains high and thousands are set to lose their benefits. What will the American people get in exchange for this enormous transfer of funds from the working class to the ultra-rich?

What will Canadians get for the enormous transfer of our tax dollars to the ultra-rich (60 billion in total come January)? An abstract promise of job creation.

But a handful of people will get filthy rich. Another neoconservative success story.

Epilogue

Another man appearing on the tape was Mark Mullins, referred to simply as an economist. He said that he had reviewed the Harris plan and confirmed that it would create 725,000 jobs.

Mullins went on to become an advisor for the Alliance Party and CEO of the Fraser Institute.

Bill Vancoughnet would be forced out of politics for soliciting an undercover cop in Toronto. The charges were dropped on the promise of his attending 'John' school.

Mike Harris's lap dog, Tim Hudak, husband of the infamous Debbie Hutton (Harris's gate keeper), is now heading the PC Party in Ontario, hoping to be our next premier.

Another neoconservative success story.

When the Foxes Take Over the Hen House

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

Ronald Reagan was a "B" movie actor. By the early 1950's his career was in the toilet and he was reduced to print ads in magazines, and parts in forgettable pictures.

But he had a look and a voice that was homey enough to convince people of anything. And that brought him to the attention of a man named Lemuel Boulware, General Electric's vice president of employee, public, and community relations, who hired Reagan to be his company's spokesperson.

Corporate America was tired of having to give in to worker's demands and wanted to shift public sympathies away from the labour force, to what journalist Murray Dobbin calls "the good corporate citizens".

But first GE had to be seen as the company reaching out to workers.

Over the past few years, few contract negotiations in U.S. industry have been as bitter and bumpy as those between General Electric Co. and the C.I.O.'s International Union of Electrical Workers. With out fail, the I.U.E.'s trigger-tempered Boss James B. Carey peppered the company with shouts of "chiseling," called its offers a "sham" and "an obvious trap." Once, in a crescendo of rage, he bellowed that G.E. was an "aid and ally" of the Communists. Usually G.E.'s negotiator, Vice President Lemuel P. Boulware, gave every bit as good as he got.

This year the script was totally rewritten. After a month of calm discussion, G.E. and the union signed a new five-year contract that made everyone happy. Cooed G.E.'s Boulware: "A splendid settlement." Echoed I.U.E.'s Carey: "A splendid settlement." (1)

General Electric were the good guys. And until his retirement in 1957, Boulware never stopped reminding his workers of how good the company was, and they had Ronald Reagan selling the same notion to the public. This strategy became known as "Boulwarism".

As personnel and press boss at General Electric, Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, 62, was one of the most controversial labor-relations managers in the history of a new art. A tough, trap-jawed Kentuckian, Boulware was a hard bargainer during contract negotiations and never failed to point out what a company like G.E. did for its employees. Many businessmen considered "Boulwarism" a smart strategy for combating Big Labor, imitated it widely, even though unions bitterly hated it. (2)

The unions began losing the battle for public opinion. And by 1960, when GE had to renegotiate with it's workers it was a whole new ball game. They could afford to be tough because any bad press could be directed at the union bosses.

The milling picket lines, the fire hoses, the club-wielding police were all reminiscent of the bloody strikes of the 1930s. When the International Union of Electrical Workers struck General Electric last week, the company vowed it would keep its plants open for all employees who wanted to work. Both sides knew the vow could lead to violence. It was not long in coming.

The last time G.E. faced a strike of comparable proportions—in 1946—it closed down its plants, but since then it has hardened its policies. Under Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, who now serves only as a consultant, G.E. developed a broad policy known through the industry as "Boulwarism," in which the company makes an unceasing effort to sell itself to the workers. In bargaining, the company first listens to the unions' demands, then puts all that it is willing to grant in its first contract offer; after that it will make only minor concessions, thus making gains from a strike problematical. (3)

But it wouldn't be enough to simply bust the unions where possible, so they also targeted government, launching a lecture circuit for Ronald Reagan, "as a crusader against big government." (4) The man who had been a liberal all of his life, was now the "spokesman" for neoconservative policies.

So who better to put forward as president when corporate America decided that life would be better if they simply ran the country? Ronald Reagan. The ultimate company spokesman.

And he did not disappoint. In 1981, Congress enacted the largest tax cuts in U.S. history.

GE was one of the biggest winners in the tax cut bill, getting a S283-million tax rebate for the period 1981-83 despite making profits of $6.5 billion. The tax windfall allowed GE to go on a buying spree of other companies, including RCA and NBC. This was a pattern for all the corporate giants as capital investment increased dramatically, with almost all of it going to other countries. In effect, the billions in tax dollars sacrificed by the American people were used to further deindustrialize their own heartland and boost the growth of super-corporations.

And taxpayers would also fund the propaganda that would allow the wholesale dismantling of the industrial infrastructure, because corporations used their enormous tax cuts to buy up media outlets, further shifting public opinion to their cause.

And besides enormous tax cuts to the wealthy, Reagan also allowed CEOs to run the treasury, beginning with Donald Regan, director of Merrill Lynch, who became secretary of the treasury and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.

In the following video clip, we see Regan bark at the president, telling him to speed it up. Which begged the question. Who was really running the country?




And Merrill Lynch has done very well indeed. When they were "bailed out" by the American people, 75% of the taxpayers' money given to the firm, was used to pay bonuses to their CEOs.

General Electric also represents the new corporate government:

GE has the resources to develop and promote new political ideas and to organize public opinion around its political agenda. "It has the capacity to advise and intervene and sometimes to veto. It has the power to punish political opponents." And its political opponents are usually Democrats, because like most large U.S. corporations GE has consistently supported the party of business ...

GE nurtures its good corporate citizen image with an $18.8-million fund for its foundations (less than half of 1 percent of its net earnings). But even here much of the money is directly self-serving, going to business think-tanks, business associations, and coalitions fighting government regulation. So the Institute for International Economics lobbies for the corporate line on trade, and the Americans for Generational Equity campaigns for cuts to entitlement programs like social security. GE was a key funder of the Committee on the Present Danger, which propagandized for the massive military buildup of the 1980s, and of the Center for Economic Progress and Employment, which, despite its name, is a front group of industry giants determined to gut product-liability laws.

While corporate Canada always had a voice in political matters, it was Brian Mulroney who first moved lobbyists right into government. And now Stephen Harper has also cut out the middle man.

His first defence minister, Gordon O'Connor, went right from lobbying for military contracts with Hill and Knowlton to helping to decide which of his former clients got to cash in.

Bernard Prigent, the VP of Pfizer, was appointed to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research.

Guy Giorno, Harper's former chief of staff, was one of the most influential lobbyists for the oil and gas industry, and his new chief of staff, Nigel Wright, was with the firm given the sole source contract for our new fighter jets.

And if you don't think that corporate Canada is in charge of the country, why are they getting further tax cuts, while Canadian citizens are being told they will have to tighten their belts?

Fascists no longer wear uniforms. They now wear three piece suits and Testoni shoes.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Continuation:

A Deceptive Democracy: A Confidence Game

Sources:

1. LABOR: The Splendid Settlement, Time Magazine, August 22, 1955

2. PERSONNEL: Boulware Bows Out, Time Magazine, September 23, 1957

3. LABOR: Violence on the Picket Line, Time Magazine, October 17, 1960

4. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 43-45

The Politics of Hate: Where Will it Lead?

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

"Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited for the task." Stephen Harper (1)

A friend just loaned me Harperland, and in the first chapter there was something that hit me.

It wasn't the revelation that Stephen Harper is a "different Conservative", with no ties to the party of Sir John A. or John Diefenbaker. I already knew that, though I think it was an important statement to make for those who vote for Harper's party believing that they are Tories. This was more of a hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservatives by the Reform-Alliance movement.

As Martin says:

The merger was a ruse of sorts. This was no equal partnership. The merged party had five times as many Alliance MPs as old Tory ones. In the election before this merger, the Alliance Party had won sixty-six seats, the Tories only twelve. Before long, Harper won the leadership of the new party, making the domination of the Reform-Alliance wing even more pronounced. This wasn't so much a merger as the Alliance Party's annexing of an auxiliary group. (2)

But what struck me was his reference to Stephen Harper hating Liberals. Not competing with, but a deep-rooted visceral hatred. Where I believe Martin is a bit misguided though, is in his belief that Harper simply hates the Liberal Party. It's much more fundamental than that.

Stephen Harper hates liberalism in all of it's manifestations, including the former Progressive Conservatives. What the right-wing Brits, especially Margaret Thatcher, would refer to as "wets", he called "pink liberals".

The opening quote referring to Canada as a "second-tier socialistic country" is seen often, but usually ends at "status". However, I think the rest of that quote is more important, as he refers to Jean Chretien as a "second-world strongman".

The term "second-world" was usually applied to the Soviet Union or Communist Block, though it's not a term used much since the Cold War. But it does reveal the Harper mindset.

I once thought that he played the 'socialist' card like a silent dog whistle to his base, but I now believe that he himself, is personally driven by a fear or loathing, perhaps both, of Communism. And it may go back to the time before the Reform Party was established, but accelerated after his involvement with men like Peter Worthington, Lubor Zinc, Peter Brimelow and David Somerville.

Worthington was obsessed with the belief that Pierre Trudeau was a Communist. Guy Giorno fell under his spell after hearing him do a radio interview, and it helped to impact his political thought. Stephen Harper joined the Northern Foundation (3) which was not only anti-communist but also anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro-Anglo; when Worthington was a member and Peter Brimelow a regular speaker at their conventions. (4)

Lubor Zinc was also a member of the 'Trudeau is a Communist' crowd, a Reform Party member and the man who coined the term 'Trudeaumania', though he meant for it to have a negative connotation.

Peter Brimelow calls himself a Paleoconservative and his book The Patriot Game so inspired Stephen Harper that he went out and bought 10 copies to give to friends. (5)

Brimelow also detested liberalism and says of Trudeau that while he espoused the notion that the individual must be protected from the State, he was alarmed when he also noted that the "State has to intervene to protect the weak members of society, minorities, those who need protection from the State against stronger forces than themselves." (6) And of course this was reflected in the Charter of Rights.

All anathema to the far right.

And then there's David Sommerville, the man that Stephen Harper replaced as president of the National Citizens Coalition. When Ernest Manning and Colin Brown first decided to create this right-wing advocacy group, they chose him to head it up, inspired by Somerville's anti-communist columns, and his book Trudeau Revealed was a Bible to the 'Cold War' crowd.

At the time, these men were considered to be crackpots by most Canadians, viewed under the shadow of McCarthyism, but to an impressionable young man just entering active politics, they were his mentors and they would have used terms like "second-world strongman".

So while Martin agrees that Harper is a different conservative and a different political figure, driven by hate, and a desire to destroy the Liberal Party (aka liberalism), he also reminds us:

Given that party's domination of the power structure through time, the Liberal order and the Canadian order were almost one and the same. To take down one was to take down the other. (7)

He had already destroyed the Tories as "pink liberals" or "wets", by swallowing them whole, and is determined to anhilate the Liberals.

The only thing standing in his way then would be us.

Sources:

1. "It is time to seek a new relationship with Canada", By Stephen Harper, December 12th, 2000

2. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 2

3. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper demonstrates continued ultra right wing affiliations by blocking pro social justice Toronto candidate, by Dr. Debra Chin, The Canadian

4. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6 3, Pg. 122

5. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, Pg. 52

6. The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, By Peter Brimelow, Key Porter Books, 1986, ISBN: 1-55013-001-3, Pg. 49

7. Martin, 2010, Pg. 6

This Stimulus Spending Scandal Should be Impeachable

I watched an account of the murder of Kathy Augustine, former Republican politician from Nevada, who was apparently murdered by her husband.

However, what I found interesting about the story was the fact that she had been impeached as state controller for violating the privileges of her office. Apparently Augustine used her staff and office photo-copier in her bid for re-election.

So how is this blatant tax-payer funded re-election campaign, called the Canada Action Plan, not an impeachable offense?

OK. I realize that Canada does not have impeachment laws, but maybe we should.

We could call the new law the Harper Law, in honour of the man who broke all the rules of common decency in the interest of self-promotion. Or maybe the Giorno Law, since he was the man who authorized it. An exact replay of his days with the corrupt Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

Or maybe even the Reform Party Law because back in the day when they were trying to promote principle, they wanted to legislate a recall law, where politicians could be impeached or recalled for abusing their office.

Boy has that party gone down the tubes since Harper took it over. Although I think they dug their grave when they teamed up with Harris himself back in the day.

I never liked Reform because of their narrow minded views, but I thought their hearts were in the right place when it came to some "values", especially anti-corruption. Now we get the corruption and the narrow minded views. Haven't we been blessed?

Hundreds of millions of dollars gone. Tax dollars in the middle of a recession. A recession that we were supposed to have weathered, only to find that when the winds stopped blowing, our house and safety nets had blown away with them.

It's a complete mess and we don't even have the Auditor General's report yet.

50 million dollars for signs and who knows how much for other re-election paraphernalia like bunting, pamphlets and plaques (?)

The contract - which requires recipient groups to submit photos of their Economic Action Plan signs - says eligible expenses for signage include maximum costs of $2,250 for a small sign and $4,250 for a large sign. Another $2,500 can be charged for a "permanent plaque." The club can expense rental fees on chairs, flagpoles, a public-address system and a stage, and can charge Ottawa for light refreshments and snacks (no booze), printing and mailing of invitations, and media kits.

All of this while the municipalities were forced to borrow money for the actual project, and many have still not been reimbursed.

And while they continue to blow their own (taxpayer funded) horn, some of the so-called infrastructure spending was nothing but a family and friends orgy.

World leaders look at what Canada’s doing and they “want to be Canadian,” Mr. Flaherty insisted. Really? It’s hard to imagine there’s much Canada envy over the millions Ottawa has thrown at local pet projects over the past two years, including Kitchener-Waterloo’s Oktoberfest ($700,000), an indoor skateboard park and climbing wall in Winnipeg ($3.2-million), a motorized orchestra pit at a concert hall in Rimouski, Que. ($153,000), or repairing a busted hockey rink in Iqaluit ($2.5-million).

No one begrudges Canadians’ right to knock back some Schnapps or play a little hockey. But to throw billions into a hodge-podge of boondoggles and call it world-beating economic policy is a bit of a stretch.

Or how about the $15-million for something called Prince Arthur’s Landing at Marina Park to "install a water main, fill in a small piece of Lake Superior with dirt and put a sewer in so private developers can cash in with a water park, hotel, and condos."

Sounds like Tony Clement's 50 million dollar boost to help an American owned hotel.

Or thousands for a circus school. Tony Clement is expected to be the first grad.

And millions of dollars for private religious schools. And when I say millions, I mean MILLIONS!!!! Libraries, indoor soccer fields.

The debate over a government grant to build an indoor soccer field at Collingwood's Pretty River Academy (PRA) has turned ugly. Dueling on-line petitions, protests and countless letters to the editor have laid bare the issue
of public money funding a private school and the apparent inability of Collingwood council to get its own recreation infrastructure projects approved. (Pretty River Debate Turns Ugly: Collingwood)

Nothing open to the public. You have to be "saved" first, but even then be willing to open your wallets.

Like Redeemer College, with strong links to both David Sweet and Harper's former deputy chief of staff Darrel Reid. They got three million dollars of "public" money despite the fact that are a "private" Bible school. Or how about the four million that went to build a library in another private religious school? How is this helping the rest of us?

As Barrie McKenna states:

Mr. Flaherty insists the government’s orgy of infrastructure spending “will leave a legacy for future generations.” Unfortunately, the legacy may be a swelling deficit that crowds out spending on the kind of infrastructure the country really needs.

Now how about that recall law?

Sun Media's Attacks on Sheila Fraser May Now Have Relevance

Last month our local paper, part of the Sun Media chain, ran on the front page of their National section, a story attacking our Attorney General, Sheila Fraser, and her office's spending. This was complimented with a political cartoon.

It all appeared to be a little odd. Where were these stories coming from and why now?

It may have something to do with her recent report on the stimulus spending.

The possible fly in the ointment for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's fall schedule is already in the hands of his government—a potentially explosive report from Auditor General Sheila Fraser on billions of dollars in stimulus spending under the government's Economic Action Plan.

A spokesman for Ms. Fraser confirmed to The Hill Times that findings of the audit, along with audits on a total of 13 other areas that could also provide the opposition with ammunition in Parliament, have been sent to the respective departments under a tight cloak of secrecy for their review, fact verification and possible discussion with Cabinet ministers.

No doubt the report will cover self-promotion advertising, pork-barrelling and the effectiveness of the entire program.

A data-extraction analysis by Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor and Halifax Chronicle-Herald reporter Stephen Maher last October found that 57 per cent of the stimulus money the government had committed for large projects to that point went to ridings held by Conservative Party of Canada MPs. Their report said the difference then between government and opposition ridings was most pronounced in Quebec, where Conservative ridings received 22 per cent of large projects even though the party holds only 13 per cent of ridings. Liberal districts received only 10 per cent of large projects though they hold 19 per cent of seats in Quebec.

... Mr. [John] McCallum [Liberal MP, Markham-Unionville, Ont] said political favouritism is only one aspect he and his party expect Ms. Fraser may have investigated. He recalled the controversy over millions of dollars the government spent promoting the program—at least $34-million—and allegations that the advertising was a thinly disguised promotion of the Conservative party rather than a useful guide for citizen and business participation. At one point, the government was pressured into withdrawing more than 30 photos of Prime Minister Harper from the Economic Action Plan website. The government was discovered spending $46,000 to turn two commuter train cars in Toronto into rolling billboards for the action plan, in the midst of the H1N1 pandemic scare, and the government spent $108,000 on an action plan reporting event on the plan's progress that, critics said, looked more like an election campaign rally.

If only Harper had his Fox News North up and running. They would have spent weeks destroying the reputation of Sheila Fraser. Biff Buffoon would have encouraged rallies for her removal and called on God to strike her down, while Janie Saber would have gone through her garbage and published receipts for Starbucks coffee. Clearly she's a Liberal.

Then by the time the report was released, it would have no credibility, having been written by a woman who belongs in a home.

I can hardly wait.

Stephen Harper No Longer Leads in Polls. Has Rasputin Dethroned Another King?

Results of a recent poll shows that King Stephen has lost his lead in the polls.

He has 29.7 to the Liberals 28.5

However, that is not the real picture, because the West always distorts the numbers.

In actual percentages he's closer to about 26% and he knows it.

So will he abdicate his throne?

When Guy Giorno was playing Rasputin to Mike Harris, King Mike got tired and handed over the keys to the kingdom.

With scandals mounting, King Mike had run out of photo-ops to hide behind, and didn't want to play the game anymore.

I have trouble imagining King Stephen getting bored with photo-ops, but clearly Canadians are getting bored with him.


Do you know what? They even look alike. Could King Stephen and King Mike have been twins separated at birth? Not exactly a Prince and the Pauper story, but it is a little uncanny.

Or maybe Giorno only learned how to build one model.

So what will the kingmaker do now? King Anthony I? Empress Helena?

I can hardly wait.

Jim Prentice Has resorted to Lying to Prove That we Need Him

Since Guy Giorno's newest Omnibus Bill has abandoned any hope of this government having an environmental platform, I wondered if we still needed Jim Prentice. I mean what is his job now?

But not to worry.

Jimmy has invented a job by fabricating accolades, since clearly the big middle finger from most Canadians didn't convince him of the "job" he was doing.

Yesterday, Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice released a list of quotes from environmental groups supporting his pending proposal to overhaul heavy vehicle emission regulations. Followers of Canadian environmental politics might have been surprised to see an enthusiastic endorsement of the plan from the Sierra Club, an organization with a less than cordial relationship with the Harper government.

The Sierra Club of Canada's executive director, John Bennett, certainly was. "We didn't know anything about it," he said. "I got a call from Sun Media last night asking if the quotes were from us. I looked at them and they're not ours, they're quotes from the Sierra Club United States, they're over a year old, they don't refer to any event in Canada and they certainly don't represent anything we actually said."

Whoa! I just got a whiff!

John Baird and Kimberley Rogers: Why Neoconservatism is Wrong for Canada

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

When Mike Harris first came to power in Ontario in 1995, he waged war against the province's poor, blaming them for everything that was wrong with our economy.

We had just come off a double dip recession and thousands of jobs had been lost to Free Trade, but the enemies were the poor who were "bleeding" us dry.

As part of the Made in America, "Common Sense Revolution", the Harrisites proclaimed that able-bodied people must work for their benefits. Ironically, many welfare recipients voted for Harris (1) believing that he was going to find them jobs, something most of them preferred. But that was not the case. They were left on their own to find employment that didn't exist, which is how they found themselves on welfare in the first place.

It was a horrible time. There were Big Brotherish signs everywhere, encouraging neighbours and family to "turn people in". Rewards were offered and a culture of fear and mistrust was created. Mike Harris wanted all welfare recipients finger printed and John Baird wanted to conduct drug tests before they received their cheques. He even put on a ridiculous public display, pouring out hypodermic needles on a table for the media, claiming that the poor would no longer be able to shoot their payments up their arms.

They had already reduced benefits by 22% when Tony Clement rewrote the "Tenant Protection Act" in favour of landlords, in order to kill rent control and make it easier to evict tenants, driving even more people into the streets. It was like living under the Gestapo.

But the saddest story of this period, was that of Kimberley Rogers, who was single and pregnant and trying to better herself, so that she would be a position to care for her child. She wanted off the welfare rolls so was taking classes at Cambrian College in Sudbury and was a straight-A student.

But in order to afford to do this, she had to take out student loans. I wouldn't class loans as income, but John Baird did, and had the woman charged when he found out that she was also receiving social assistance. As a result, she was sentenced to six-months house arrest, and confined to a second floor apartment except for three hours a week. Her welfare benefits were cut off and she was ordered to repay the government more than $13,000.

'I ran out of food this weekend. I am unable to sleep. . . . I am very upset and I cry all the time.' Kimberly Rogers wrote these words in her court appeal in May. Three months later, 40 years old and eight months pregnant, she was found dead in the Sudbury, Ont., apartment where she had been confined 24 hours a day for the crime of taking student loans while on welfare. (2)

This was May 14, 2001, when Rogers launched a case under the Charter of Rights that challenged the constitutional validity of Ontario Works regulations that suspended benefits after a conviction of welfare fraud. She was able to have her welfare benefits reinstated May 31, but the court had yet to rule on her challenge at the time of her death. (3)

The Globe described her living conditions throughout this ordeal:

It's a 21st-century Dickens story. There's not much to look at out the narrow second-floor window of 286 Hazel St. in downtown Sudbury. The back yard is a grey gravel driveway strewn with litter. There's a rusted black Ford that looks as though it's been up on blocks for a decade, and a yellowed dishwasher that someone discarded years ago. And overlooking it is the ramshackle two-storey, five-tenant apartment building where Kimberly Rogers, perhaps Ontario's best-known welfare recipient, spent almost every hour of the past three months ... this is where the 40-year-old expecting mother and straight-A recent college graduate spent her last days ..

Her body wasn't found for two days. Eight months pregnant, she was trapped inside her sweltering apartment for the duration of a record-setting heat wave. Temperatures were above 30 degrees for six days in a row the week she died. "It was like a sauna in there," Amanda Chodura of Sudbury's Elizabeth Fry Society, who frequently visited with Rogers, told The Globe and Mail. Rogers's crime was one only a poor person could be convicted of.

"I have no one to turn to for money or a home if I am evicted," she said. "If I were evicted, I would have to go to a shelter. I would have no money to pay for storage of my belongings, and fear that I could lose everything." She worried about where every meal would come from, and feared for the future of her unborn child. (2)

Sadly, her unborn child had no future, as he perished with his mother. "John Baird has said he cannot comment on the case, which he calls "a regrettable occurrence".... " (2)

"A regrettable occurrence". They had a lot of those, from Dudley George to Walkerton. All victims of a neoconservative agenda.

So when I read the story of another single mom being denied human compassion, it brought back the story of Kimberly Rodgers and why neoconservatism is the wrong fit for Canada:

A Moncton, N.B., single mother who is off work as she helps her two-year-old son recover from brain surgery is fighting the federal government's decision to deny her employment insurance benefits. Tricia Moran's two-year-old son Brayden has a rare condition, which causes cavernous malformations to grow on the outer surface of his brain. Two of these growths became so large that Brayden needed brain surgery last month to remove them. While his skull heals, he can't go to daycare out of fear that a knock in the head could cause seizures.

Brayden, 2, has a rare condition, which causes cavernous malformations to grow on the outer surface of his brain. Moran, armed with notes from her doctor, her son's neurosurgeon, and her employer stating her job is waiting for her when she is able to return, applied for sickness leave under employment insurance, citing stress. "I applied for the EI insurance, and they called me on July 14 and told me that I was denied because I wasn't the one that was sick, and the only reason that I was home was to care for my sick son, so they said I didn't qualify for it," Moran
said.

And I think that if we really want to understand where John Baird was coming from, claiming to be only protecting taxpayer's "hard-earned" money, we need to look at his involvement with Anderson Consulting, and Baird's attempt to privatize social services. Andersons changed their name to Accenture after the Enron Scandal.

The Canadian Province of Ontario's contract for social services delivery, essentially privatized welfare during the duration of the contract (which was to be for 4 years, but has gone over that limit by more than a year). As of March 2002, Accenture has been paid $246 million (CND) to do this "overhaul of the Ontario welfare service", even though the original estimate was $50 - $70 million and the project was eventually capped at $180 million. At one point, Accenture billed taxpayers $26,000 in unreceipted out of pocket expenses and Accenture management was paid up to $575/hour. In 1999, a year after the Auditor General of Ontario put out a scathing report on the contract, hourly rates paid to Accenture management actually rose (3%), rather than being cut. After this, the government was forced to finally renegotiate a cut to Accenture's billing rates. The Ontario government cut welfare payments to $355.71 per child in poverty and fired massive numbers of social service workers, making this contract essentially a transfer from those in need to those in Accenture. (4)

Accenture has a huge, problem-filled contract, to 'streamline' the delivery of welfare in Ontario. In 2000 and 2001, Accenture gave $20,000 Canadian to the governing Tories. Interestingly, they started making donations to the Tories only after the Tory government's Accenture contract was given a scathing review by the Provincial auditor, and they were forced to renegotiate the contract. Said Deputy Liberal Leader Sandra Pupatello: "They [Accenture] were fearing that they were going to lose the contract altogether because the government was taking far too much heat on this contract. Then, suddenly, they started contributing to the PC Coffers" (5)

And yet no one from Accenture or the Harris government were ever put under house arrest, despite the fact that they stole more money than Ms Rodgers or her unborn child ever could. Why is that?

Sources:

1. Mike Harris's Ontario: Open for Business, Closed to People, Fernwood, 1997, ISBN: 1895686733

2. Bleak House, By Mark MacKinnon and Keith Lacey, Globe and Mail. August 18, 2001

3. Inquest into welfare mother's death begins, By Darren Yourk, Globe and Mail, October 15, 2002

4. "Tory Welfare Donations Under Fire", Hamilton Spectator, October 25, 2001

5. "Consulting Firm Boosts PC Coffers, Liberals Say", By Richard Brennan, Toronto Star, October 25th, 2001