The extravagantly titled Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird recently yapped excitedly about his expectation that federal infrastructure funds will flow "ten times faster than anything in the modern era". That's a relief, because the Building Canada Fund his government created in 2007 to dole out infrastructure money to municipalities has, so far, transferred precisely nothing: breaking its funds-disbursement speed record might just be something this government can do.
I was amused to hear Baird explain why he sees no need to conduct strict oversight of the way infrastructure funds are spent: he's not worried, he says, because provinces and municipalities must provide matching funds for their federal money--an obligation which apparently provides "the biggest form of accountability" conceivable. Thus, a senior member of Canada's ostensibly "fiscally conservative" party maintains that the optimal agent of governmental accountability is another level of government and that governments become reliably self-policing whenever they are forced to spend money in order to get more money.
I wonder--is the term "fiscally conservative" really something that this party believes it can claim unironically, or are they aware that it's become merely the punch-line of a sick joke?
The West Wants In (To The Trough):
Just because you allow a barely-staffed "commission" to sit idle whilst funnelling a million tax-payer dollars into its inertia does not mean you can't violate the principles on which it was established in order to toss out partisan pork to under-qualified courtiers.
Only a few years after elevating himself to Canada's pontificate of political moral supremacy and waging an electoral campaign full of ad urbis et orbi fulminations against government waste and arrogance, Stephen Harper invited a lorry-load of his ideological confederates to dip their biscuit faces into rich, thick tax-funded gravy. None declined the honour, though I am sure they all retain their commitment to their libertarian, anti-government ideals.
I love the statement from the PMO on the matter:
"...a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office says the posts went to qualified candidates, and that their partisan activities and friendships with Harper should not exclude them from the jobs".One is struck by how radically different this exculpatory whine is from the rote statements issued by Liberal PMO's down through the decades; for instance, it contains the word "Harper" rather than "Trudeau", "Turner", "Chrétien" or "Martin". If you don't think that's a huge difference, you're clearly with the terrorists. And you're probably gay. You no doubt also speak passable French.
“Just Because I'm The Minister Doesn't Mean I Have To Do Stuff”:
Minister of Defence Peter Mackay assures us that "the federal government is constantly looking at[sic] ways to improve search and rescue response", except where the need for improvement is obvious and pressing.
Should a transit point for hundreds of heliborne offshore oil-rig workers--a place that witnessed the deaths of seventeen men in a tragic crash a few months ago--be given a dedicated search-and-rescue helicopter? Maybe. Minister Mackay doesn't know. Moreover, he says, it's not his problem: it's the Armed Forces' decision to make. "I guess that's a judgment call that the military make based on the information that they have," he bleated.
Astonishing. Harper's tin soldiers are proudly political about sending young men and women to Afghanistan to die defending a corrupt Islamist narco-state; it's personal to them--a crusade, a vendetta. When it comes to their sedulous patronage of warlords and Talib fellow travelers, offered with a smile from the ivied ignorance of the Centre Block, they show fearless leadership indeed.
When it comes to providing security to their own citizens, to hard-working tax-payers doing some of the world's most dangerous jobs on Hibernia's oil rigs, Harperoids will let faceless, irresponsible, non-executive bureaucrats make the key decisions. After all, the Canadian military cannot be expected to do everything: it can't prop up Hamid Karzai's rule over Kabul's suburbs and prevent needless catastrophes by providing a minimum standard of search-and-rescue capability to its own people. Let's keep our priorities straight: warlords first; Canadians second.
19 comments:
Sir Francis,
Shooting air again?
Ready...Fire...Aim!
You didn't pick anything worth criticizing.
1. The Conservative's waiting for other level's of government to pony up to the bar, not a bad idea. A hell of a lot better than dumping taxpayer money from an aircraft.
2. Appointing Tory aparatchiks to boards. Considering that the Liberal's, Bloc, and NDP were up to their snoots in ensuring Gwyn Morgan's name was dragged through the mud, I really don't see the issue. Have the Liberal's ever done anything but appoint their own apparatchiks to boards?
3. I read it three times. What WAS your point?
Go after the "truth ads" or something. I know, tell Canadian's they are neatherthal mouth breathers because they want Rafferty and McClintic to swing from a rope. Try something with more zip than they are not fast enough to throw around taxpayer money, they are appointing libertarian's and conservative's to boards, and they have some vague confused issue with Search and Rescue helicopters.
1. My post was not about how nice it is that Harper is not yet "dumping taxpayer money from an aircraft", or about the wisdom of his sitting on his ass whilst waiting for provincial initiative, you obdurate fool. It is about the reckless idiocy of handing money over to the provinces without the slightest expectation of results-oriented accountability.
By the way: you said that I'm just complaining that Harper isn't "fast enough to throw around taxpayer money". That's hilarious. Read the news, Tomm: Harper recently canned the Clerk of the Privy Council almost certainly because he wasn't letting your "libertarian" friends dole out the stimulus pork quickly enough. It's your hero Harper--not me--who's in a mad rush to spread cash around and buy votes. He's wasting his time with me, anyways. As for you, he bought your ass--cheaply--a long time ago.
2. Thanks for that master-class in intentional logic, Tomm. Of course Harper could not possibly have nominated another candidate after his first attempt at seating a partisan ideologue failed. Of course Harper just had to maintain the staff of a useless, do-nothing "commission" at the cost of over a million tax-payer dollars. Of course Harper had to fill patronage posts with CPC hacks rather than with qualified, politically unaligned candidates.
Indeed, that's what a Liberal would have done, after all. Why apply a higher standard to someone who claims to follow a higher standard?
And so the trap has sprung, Tomm. Remember the words, "If you don't think that's a huge difference, you're clearly with the terrorists. And you're probably gay"? They were written with your brand of partisan sedulousness in mind. Thanks for living up to the parody I meant to invoke. You have officially become as noxious a threat to our democracy as the most mindless robo-Liberal.
3. My point, child, is that our government might want to start putting the same care, passion, and leadership into the job of protecting its own people as it puts into the job of propping up Karzai's tyrannical, poppy-growing shithole. Have a gown-up read the post aloud to you; it might help.
Finally, I could not have conceived of a point of rebuttal more richly admixed of insolence and irrelevance as that of Rafferty and McClintic.
In regards to those two, however, I am not at all sure that Canadians do want to see them "swing from a rope". I think most of us want to see the pair go through a Western European innovation called a “trial” before deciding upon their guilt (as we don't have the unerring juridical intuition that you have).
No doubt you, like the police, initially suspected Tori's mother of the crime; perhaps you were, as the police were, convinced of Tara McDonald's guilt until just a few days ago. You probably wanted Tara to swing last week. You probably would have hanged her yourself.
Her murder would have been an outrageous injustice, of course, but lynchers such as yourself are never interested in justice. You are interested only in moral vanity. Your swaggering, loud-mouthed blood-lust is always nothing more than a pathetic attempt to fill a deep moral hole in your own souls by loudly claiming adherence to a principle virtually everyone else is psychologically healthy enough to take for granted.
Your inner moral emptiness requires a compensating rhetoric of repugnance. You’re so desperate to have us believe you feel an emotion the reality of which you actually doubt.
You're like the catastrophically uncouth moron who, invited to his first black-tie dinner, attempts to prove that he belongs with the "classy" folks who surround him by gifting the assembly with the unsolicited announcement that he's truly disgusted by people who defecate in public.
Anyways, I know full well why you brought up the death of little Tori Stafford: you wanted to suggest that you (and Western Harperoids like you) care about her more than Eastern commies like me ever could.
And that's splendid, for, now that you've managed to exploit the corpse of a murdered child in a sickeningly futile attempt to score the cheapest, grubbiest kind of moral altitude over me, her death has not been in vain.
Sir Francis,
You said:
"...Thanks for living up to the parody I meant to invoke. You have officially become as noxious a threat to our democracy as the most mindless robo-Liberal...
...lynchers such as yourself are never interested in justice. You are interested only in moral vanity. Your swaggering, loud-mouthed blood-lust is always nothing more than a pathetic attempt to fill a deep moral hole in your own souls..."
Much better. At least now I feel I have been entertained.
But, let's discuss these issues without your high handed blanket assumpotions on what sort of freak of nature I am:
("...Your inner moral emptiness requires a compensating rhetoric of repugnance. You’re so desperate to have us believe you feel an emotion the reality of which you actually doubt...")
Firstly, it was you that brought up that "precisely nothing" had been doled out. Do you enjoy arguing both sides of an issue much?
Secondly, why should Harper have continued to put captains of industry up to a hair brained parliamentary committee led by the slathering partisan hounds of political correctness.
"...Due to the fact that Mr. Gwyn Morgan is unsuitable for the proposed appointment as Chairperson of the Public Appointments Commission, this Committee calls on the Prime Minister to withdraw Mr. Morgan’s appointment immediately..."
This little piece of partisan filth, without containing further rationale, was the report of the Standing Committee of Government Operations and Estimates chaired by Diane Marleau and included as sub-chair such illustrious parliamentarians as Peggy Nash.
So, your suggestion is to perhaps ask Diane Marleau and Peggy Nash to name someone who they won't class as a racist/bigot for the next nomination? Doesn't this strike you as a little odd? Not one of the high points of parliamentary history, yet you are willing to wallow in it. Well indulge yourself Senator McCarthy....
Thirdly, I still don't understand what you're getting at. I truly must be thick as a plank.
Onto the tragedy still unfolding in Woodstock. I apologize if I have offended you. It was topical and spoke to a society that is fearful of itself and doesn't seem to be safe. It is a perception that is far more powerful than any dry crime statistics that somebody might trot out to say we are a safer society. It also re-energizes our societal problems around how we coddle our criminals. IF these people are ultimately found guilty of the charges laid against them, the government of Canada will continue to pay for everything, including their full costs for any and all appeals they wish to bring. To be their attorney...
Your portraying me as some photo snapping rubber necker at a tragic roadside accident is offensive.
Cut back on the "holier than thou".
This is extremely interesting.
I think, however, it should be urbi et orbi. Ad, as you recall, always takes the accusative, and these are dative.
Firstly, it was you that brought up that "precisely nothing"...
I sure did--in order to point out the uselessness of a previously-established federal program and to debunk current CPC propaganda about the "results" they're getting from their stimulus budget. My argument is, I think, perfectly internally consistent: Harper's an incorrigibly incompetent liar.
Doesn't this strike you as a little odd?
What strikes me as odd is your malicious unwillingness to acknowledge the brazen stupidity of allowing a non-functioning commission to draw massive public funds for two years.
Here's the crux of our philosophical difference: you disagree with the Standing Committee's rejection of the very first unqualified CPC hack brought before it.
Contrariwise, I disagree with Harper's decision to walk away from the process in a fit of spoiled childishness only to then fund the commission for doing nothing for two years, rather than simply disbanding it until such time as he found a proper chairman for it.
Rejecting Morgan was the Opposition's doing; wasting over a million dollars was Harper's doing, and it's a boondoggle he's going to have to wear, quite regardless of your limp attempts at exculpatory rationalisation.
I'll give Liberal partisans this, at least: you don't hear them simpering about how Adscam was forced on the party by circumstance. They've retained too much self-respect for that, amazingly.
Onto the tragedy still unfolding in Woodstock... It was topical...
It was utterly, immaculately extraneous to my post. It could not have been made to fit with a crowbar.
It is a perception that is far more powerful than any dry crime statistics that somebody might trot out to say we are a safer society.
Exactly. Your CPC friends are quite sure they made Canada safer with last year's vacuous, show-boating changes to the Criminal Code. Someone should ask Tara McDonald how safe Harper's Canada is.
My own sense is that, having spent the last ten years making the Prairies the murder capital of the country, Western "conservative" élites are now intent on spreading the same failed pseudo-American "hang-'em-high" policies across the whole Dominion.
Now, crime couldn't possibly be higher in Alberta or Saskatchewan, but CPC stupidity is a definite threat to Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes--all of which enjoy the lowest urban homicide rates in North America.
...the government of Canada will continue to pay for everything...
If this is your way of saying that it would be easier and cheaper to just kill them, I would agree, and add that living in a civilisation like ours (which some of us like to think of as nominally Christian) is rarely easy or cheap.
Governmental acknowledgment that everyone--even the intellectually and morally lowest of us-- has a basic right to life is one of the last vestiges of the Christian ethos that founded us. Of course, I expect even that precept to be expunged by the gathering pace of Western re-paganisation. I expect we shall soon be back to watching criminals being devoured by beasts.
Until then, Tomm, apply to the cost of imprisoning criminals the forbearance you apply to the cost of maintaining useless commissions.
Your portraying me as some photo snapping rubber necker at a tragic roadside accident is offensive.
Here's the thing, Tomm: when you use a child's murder in a smart-arsed piece of rhetoric designed to smear an ideological opponent as a "soft-on-crime" kiddie-killer enabler, you don't get to be offended--by anything. You just get to be made aware of how beyond the pale it is. So, physician, heal thyself.
P.:
I think you're right. I assumed the formula to be "To the city and the world" as I was writing, but I believe, on second thought, that the correct formula is "For the city and the world".
Sir Francis,
"...It was utterly, immaculately extraneous to my post. It could not have been made to fit with a crowbar."
Loved it. You have a wonderful way with words. And you are right, it was a strange leap for me to have made.
We appear to be talking at cross purposes. I mention Gwyn Morgan, you mention how Harper didn't disband the Commission.
I mention that outrageous crimes create the perception of lawlessness and you 1)either accuse me of all kinds of ghastly drum thumping, or 2)point to western Canada as the crime riddled pit of the nation and blame conservative party supporters and their ilk for this state of affairs. As I said, we aren't talking about the same thing.
If you want to see "smart assed rhetoric" just cruise through some of your own posts. You have a very acidic tongue.
We appear to be talking at cross purposes.
True, but only because I've insisted on being relevant.
I'll be damned if I know how the Standing Committee forced Harper to keep paying for a stillborn commission, and the reason why crass CPC partisanship is more praiseworthy than its Liberal equivalent eludes me.
[You] point to western Canada as the crime riddled pit of the nation and blame conservative party supporters and their ilk for this state of affairs.
Well, the stats don't lie, unfortunately; I wish the case were otherwise.
Obviously, I hate to see high crime rates in any part of the country. I just think it's a sad irony that the Western Canadian Right has been blaming "high" crime rates on the feds for years, when the highest crime rates have been generated by those provinces with the most "conservative" governments and electors. Justice and law enforcement are provincial jurisdictions, Tomm, as you know.
Anyways, the Stafford murder is tragic and heart-rending. So, where's the outrage against the federal government and its clearly ineffective anti-crime agenda? If this had happened under Chrétien/Martin, the Right would be baying for federal blood.
Where are all the torches and pitchforks now? Does Harper get a pass because of his "tough-on-crime" histrionics? I thought conservatism was supposed to be pragmatic and results-oriented. Harper passes a "tough" new law; a few months later, police are searching for a little girl's body. Some “tough” law.
Of course, rightists with healthy IQ's have always known that no body of law, however "tough", will ever prevent crime. That's a lesson even their dimmer colleagues shall quickly learn the hard way, as serious crimes continue to pile up under Harper--and they will.
Perhaps this will have the salutary effect of pulling the Right's head out of its ass and restraining it, for a generation at least, from claiming the moral high ground on law-and-order issues.
...just cruise through some of your own posts.
No can do. I'm not that narcissistic, contrary to all available evidence.
Sir Francis,
We have both probably under-estimated how thin skinned the PM is.
When the Martin campaign released the guns in the street ad, all Harper did was smile, said he could take a punch, and indicate that Martin should probably apologize to our people in uniform.
It seemed that he had a "hide" and was tough enough to accept the crap he was receiving. However, since getting elected, he has shown he is quite vindictive, and does not like criticism all that much.
Perhaps he kept the Commission (like a head on a spike) to remind himself and others that there are consequences to actions.
Any thoughts?
...since getting elected, he has shown he is quite vindictive, and does not like criticism all that much.
Did he not demonstrate all of that long ago--like when he quit both the P.C. and Reform parties in a snit because he couldn't get his way? Preston Manning and Stockwell Day both carry stilettos in their backs that bear eloquent testimony to Harper's ugly disposition.
Perhaps he kept the Commission...to remind himself and others that there are consequences to actions.
But the "action" in question is Harper's own ineptitude. Surely, he wouldn't want to build an everlasting memorial to something so embarrassing. History is doing a fine job of that on its own, in any case.
No, Harper just feels that a million bucks isn't that much cash. It's the C.D. Howe syndrome. "What's a million?" becomes a truly rhetorical question when you're in a job that allows you to throw around millions of other people's dollars on an hourly basis. It's a syndrome that attacks everyone, irrespective of party affiliation.
Sir Francis,
I don't think you're right.
He isn't doing it because he doesn't care about the money, there are other reasons.
Or, are you Harper's mysterious hair stylist?
Or, are you Harper's mysterious hair stylist?
You may be on to something there, Tomm. Perhaps Harper really does care, deeply, about the money.
Perhaps his psychic hairdresser simply informed him that his Mars was entering Saturn and that good luck would follow if he sacrificed a million dollars to Marduk, Sumerian god of destiny.
You're certainly free to believe that. Or you can believe, as I do, that Harper is simply a rebarbative jackanapes. I think the facts speak for themselves.
Speaking of Marduk, perhaps Tomm should read up on the myth of redemptive violence, which the "tough on crime" folks seem to be the most fervent believers in.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml
That's a great article, Ryan. Thanks for that. Your link didn't work, though. Those who wish to read the piece can click for it here.
Strangely, Wink uses Commonwealth spelling (e.g. "honour"). I'm assuming Ekklesia.org is based in the UK.
Ha! Reverse cultural imperialism. I love it...
Perhaps Wink decided that the violence done against the English language by Americans had to stop somewhere...
Jesus, that exchange with Tomm was painful.
Tomm: Why don't you join a Facebook Group that discusses Jon & Kate + 8 and stop bothering people out of some primitive impulse to get a rise out of them simply because they put more time into reading, thinking and writing about things? You're a parent with children, not some morose teenager determined to prove his own parents stupid.
Ti:
Hmm. You've been strangely silent lately, and your disappearance seems to have coincided quite neatly with the busiest stage of Michaëlle Jean's Arctic tour. I'm getting huge sock-puppet vibes here.
Methinks I've just found out how our Governor General relieves her id's snark pressure after long days of being ceremoniously polite to idiots.
Oh, and our friend "Biff" is now polluting bandwith with his very own blog. He appears to carry you deep in his heart. He mentioned you over at Red Tory's open thread, where he's been begging for traffic. It was rather sad, actually.
I saw that comment from Biff. At least the little fraud admitted he had been sock-puppeting over at Macleans, which I had guessed last summer, I believe. I really never cared about that; just the sheer amount of lying the idiot did to derail discussions. It's psychotic.
Methinks I've just found out how our Governor General relieves her id's snark pressure after long days of being ceremoniously polite to idiots.
Actually, I'm more like John Ralston Saul and not just because I have a penis. But yes, this is a way of relieving the pressure after being ceremoniously polite in real life. Always has been. The last few days back home for a funeral being a case in point.
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