If Stephen Harper Won't Listen to Us Maybe He'll Listen to His Fellow Republicans

Despite opposition from experts, the Conservatives are determined to build more prisons for unreported crime. Apparently the budget of between 10 and 13 billion includes $67,000 for crystal balls, because we have no idea how to incarcerate imaginary prisoners.

But since they refuse to listen to Canadians who tell them this is a recipe for disaster, maybe they should listen to their fellow Republicans. Newt Gingrich has already come out and said that too much incarceration is unsustainable.

But there is also this story to consider: Republican lawmakers paying for tough crime laws:

When Harry Coates campaigned for the Oklahoma state Senate in 2002, he had one approach to crime: "Lock 'em up and throw away the key." Now, Coates is looking for that key. He and other tough-on-crime lawmakers across the country, faced with steep budget shortfalls, are searching anxiously for ways to let inmates out of prison faster and keep more offenders on the street.

Oklahoma's preferred answer for crime has collided head-on with a budget deficit estimated at $600 million, and prison costs that have increased more than 30 percent in the last decade. For years, lawmakers have pushed each other to lengthen prison sentences and increase the number of criminals behind bars. Not now: This week, new Republican Speaker of the House Kris Steele is expected to unveil a package of proposals that would divert thousands of nonviolent lawbreakers from the prison system and ramp up paroles.

Suggesting that prison expansion will create jobs is nonsense. It's going to break us.

My Interview with Stockwell Day

Still trying to get used to this mike, but I think this one is a little better.

So Harper's Pal Newt Gingrich Says He's Wrong on Crime

I've already posted on how Harper's Reformers helped Newt Gingrich win the House in the mid 1990's.

They didn't get much more right-wing than the Newt.

But now Gingrich is challenging the Harper government's new tough on the poor by making them all criminals, law and order agenda, that includes prison expansion and the cancelling of rehabilitation programs.

Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, is the best-known leader of Right on Crime, a new conservative group that is blowing the whistle on the idea that more prisons, more prisoners and more money poured into punishment is the way to keep people safe. In the Post, he wrote that the U.S. spent a staggering $68 billion last year on corrections, largely to lock up petty criminals and addicts. Worse, he added, “half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half the time, and we know there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”

What a week for the Harper government to announce the latest instalment of its “tough on crime” agenda. Ottawa doled out $150 million to fund hundreds of new beds at jails in Ontario, Quebec and the Prairies, part of a plan that will cost at least $2 billion over the next five years (the government’s figure) or as much as $5 billion (the estimate by the independent Parliamentary budget officer). The Conservatives should think again, and take on board the message from Gingrich & Co. Instead of harping on about being “tough on crime,” they should focus on getting it right on crime — in the best possible way.

But how can their wealthy buddies profit from that?

Listen to Stockwell Day try and justify his "build it and they will come" waste of our money.

The Conservative Party Owes Taxpayers 45 Million Dollars

When the Harper government was designing their own website to promote the Canada Action Plan, they claimed that they got the go ahead from senior bureaucrats.

Turns out they were lying. Lying through their teeth.

The Harper government claims a senior bureaucrat gave it the go-ahead to avoid rules governing the look and feel of its Economic Action Plan website.

But the Conservatives are declining to provide documentary evidence of the exemption, which does not appear among hundreds of pages of memos,drafts and emails obtained by The Canadian Press under an Access to Information Act request that took more than a year to process. Instead, the public-service paper trail leads to Oct. 1, 2009, when the Treasury Board team leader in charge of policing the government’s own "Common Look and Feel" standards wrote that the exemption request for the action plan website should be denied.

They were told to buy their own ads, but instead stole 45 million dollars from the public purse so we could be treated to more than 30 photos of Herr Harper and a rendition of his piano playing, linked from every single government website.

And along with that cheque, we must also demand the resignations of Vic Toews and Stockwell Day, since they perpetrated this FRAUD.

The party MUST and I mean MUST, pay us back. This has gone too far.

Stockwell Days Says That His Party Does Not Have the Legal Right to Govern

If anything defines our current government it's hypocrisy, so it's always fun to dig up old media stories, and make them eat their words.

Cowboys for Social Responsibility unearthed an old Globe and Mail where Stockwell Day suggested that running deficits should be made illegal.

He claims to be taking a page from Ralph Klein's play book, but Mike Harris did the same thing. That's why Jim Flaherty had to hide a six billion dollar deficit back in the day. Otherwise, I guess Mikey would have hauled him off to jail, where he could break bread with the homeless.

And before you claim that the recession made them do it, Canada was in a deficit long before the recession hit.

This government just likes to spend our money. They have turned it into an art form.

Stephen Harper Says That Canada Needs This Gun Registry

I posted a history of Canada's gun laws not long ago, including the fact that Stephen Harper had voted twice in favour of the registry, when he was a Reform Party MP.

I thought it was important for Canadians to understand that this was not a Liberal Gun Registry, but our gun laws emerged over time as various governments answered to the demands of the Canadian people.

In fact one of the major changes came about on the initiative of a former Ontario Attorney General, while Conservative Bill Davis was premier. Davis's daughters had been attending a school where a shooting had taken place.

And that Attorney General was John Clement, stepfather of Tony Clement.

Postmedia has picked up on some of the history of the Harper hypocrisy: Harper initially supported long-gun registry

He said at the time that he had made his initial decision after a poll showed his constituents supported the registry, but then a second poll showed that 60 per cent were against it after learning more about it. After he switched, he was accused of flip-flopping and rigging the survey to get the result he wanted, according to 15-year-old news stories, while at least one newspaper editorial accused him of retreating from his convictions to toe the party line.

Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

And Harper's games are resulting in more NDP members deciding to do what's right: Tory tactics driving NDP MPs to back gun registry

REGINA—A Conservative backlash is driving more New Democrats MPs into the pro-gun registry camp, the Toronto Star has learned. Welland MP Malcolm Allen confirmed Monday at the NDP’s caucus retreat in Regina that he will be reversing his earlier support for a Conservative private member's bill to scrap the controversial program “The majority (of people in his riding) … have said ‘we think at this point we should keep it and we want you to go work on it,’” Allen told the Star.

So keep up the good work Steve. Your hypocrisy is helping us all.

And speaking of hypocrisy. Remember this?

You're Right Climenhaga: That's "really flipping' weird,"

The Reformers have finally come up with a new line to handle those pesky media questions. No longer will we hear "no comment". Nope. "Shaddap You Face"

"What do you mean the earth is only 6000 years ago?"

"Shaddap You Face"

"Why more prisons when the crime rate is falling?"

"Shaddap You Face"

"We have a deficit, so why are you giving hundreds of millions of dollars to professional hockey teams?"

"Shaddap You Face"

"The police want the gun registry kept. Shouldn't their opinion count?"

"Shaddap You Face"

It's brilliant really. Harper's base will love it.

So the next time a Reformer shows up at your door asking if you are going to vote for Stephen Harper, you know what you have to do:

"What's-a matter you, hey, gotta no respect
What-a you t'ink you do, why you look-a so sad
It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a place
Ah, shaddap you face"

And David Climenhaga has another excellent column. Love this man.