Can They Even Spell Transparency?

Wasn't that one of their big promises? Transparency?

Right before Harper muzzled all of this ministers?

Yeah, well, here you go.

The Harper Conservatives now routinely delay requests for government documents – a right of Canadians under the law – well beyond the 30 days that the Access to Information Act requires.

I'm sure they'll tell us it's for "national security", but really, we know they're just trying to hide all those hand-written listeriosis crisis notes from us.

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The Right Wing and the Forced Failure

If you ever want to destroy an institution, the best thing to do is to take control of it and make it fail. At that point, you can declare it a failure and destroy it.

As examples of the all too frequent use of this policy by the wealthy and elite of the right wing, I list the following.

1. The destruction of North American tram and train lines by the Big Three automakers to support the increased consumption of their own products.

2. The damage done to the Ontario educational system by two successive Conservative governments. Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, as Premiers, set out to "get government out of the education business" by attacking teachers on television, defunding public education through private school "vouchers" and various other tricks.

3. In Rwanda, when Romeo Dallaire insisted that a slaughter could be averted with enough troops, no one reacted. The international community made sure that peacekeeping could be seen to fail so that they could stop doing peacekeeping ... even if the citizens thought it was a worthwhile expenditure.

In that vein, the right wing lunatic fringe of American politics has spent decades undermining the United Nations. While they insist that the U.N. is a "debating society" and denounce it for its effectiveness, they spend a lot of time making sure that it is not effective.

Take, for instance, the U.S. veto used to prevent a resolution in favour of a ceasefire in latest Israeli slaughter of Palestinians with modern weaponry and Palestine rocketfire in to Southern Israel.

The United States thwarted an effort by Libya on Sunday to persuade the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after Israel launched a ground invasion, diplomats said.

Yep.

Keep up the good work.

h/t Galloping Beaver

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Just so we're clear: He's a Hypocrite

I think it's time to shut the doors and close the curtains on Stephen Harper's career. It's obvious now that he already has. We've watched him throw away his integrity, bit by bit, for a couple of years now.

He promised us open government and he gagged all of his cabinet ministers.

He promised us more free votes and more democracy but meanwhile he was the first to shut down communication with the duly elected Palestinian government because he didn't like who won their election.

He promised a balanced budget and instead squandered the surplus left to him even before the economic insanity set in.

He promised to work on "Arctic sovereignty" but has only repeatedly announced the construction of the same ships that he doesn't actually have the budget to build.

He promised us transparency in government but his officials and ministers have stormed out of the every meeting regarding their electoral chicanery. They have in fact gone so far in to opaque that they are suing an Elections Canada official just so they can insist that he not speak to a Parliamentary Committee.

And now the grand finale.

After all those years of bashing the House of Commons for their "entitlements" such as pensions and benefits. After all those years of bashing the Senate for its elitist, unelected position of privilege; for its laziness and failure to be democratic, we find ourselves here.

As if to finally bury the notion that there was anything, ever that was "reforming" about the "Reform Party" or the Conservative Alliance it became; as if to forever declare to the country that this new party is just another big business party made up of the actual wealthy elites; as if to burn and etch in char forever the word "Hypocrite" over his legacy, he and his party have appointed 18 people to the Senate.

No more talk of the "elected Senate". No more railing at the supposedly elitist liberals who are therein housed.

Nope.

Just a hypocrite. A pathetic hypocrite on his way the hell out. A man who, we now realize, really did just lose an election because all of the people who didn't vote for him actually did vote against him. He's a loser, and we know, and now we know that he knows it, because otherwise he wouldn't be throwing away the last fraction of a percent of his integrity like this.

You're done, Stephen. There's a plush VP's job waiting for you somewhere. Some type of job where you don't do any work but they give you tonnes of cash and stock options in gratitude for your service to the wealthy of our nation.

Go home, already. Everything from here on in is just disgraceful.

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Christmas Carols

If the coalition is my early Christmas present, then the exploding Conservative heads with their thrashing and whining constitute the Carolers.

The Facebook group "Canadians Against the Left Coalition" wants to tell us this is an "overthrow" of the government.

I can definitely hear "Oh, come, oh come! Unholy Alliance!" being sung to the tune of "Oh, come, oh, come Emmanuel".

And of course there's the stunningly ignorant complaint that "no one voted for this coalition". Maybe you haven't noticed that there was no "coalition/not coalition" option on your ballot. That's because the potential for coalition has been and always will be a part of our representative parliament.

And there's incredibly hypocritical complaint from pretty much any of these guys that the Liberals are in bed with separatists(Separatists! Separatists! Separatists!). I don't know guys, do you remember when Stephen Harper wanted to get in bed with the separatists to "overthrow" the Martin government in 2004. Fortunately, the Internet remembers. I'm sure you've all got a ready rationalization for why it was okay for Harper but not for Dion.

It's all music to my ears. Even if it doesn't work out, it was worth it just to drive up their collective blood pressure.

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Maybe Libertarianism is Fleeting

I'm trying to understand why the Tory numbers are dropping.

Dion and Layton didn't perform all that well in the debates. No one is really jumping on the Listeria investigation and deaths. So what's going on?

I would like to submit to you that a significant number of the people who vote Conservative, the people that call themselves "Libertarian", are actually just "selfish when they're winning".

If you have a good job with good benefits, reasonable security and the likelihood of easily changing jobs, you can afford to call yourself "Libertarian". They you vote Conservative and curse the people without jobs as being lazy and irresponsible. You want tax cuts and cuts to social services because, hey, those people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

But the economy is changing. People are becoming a little less sure of their jobs. Sure, it looks like your little company is doing alright, but we could be looking at millions of layoffs across the country. The stock market is plunging. Credit is hard to get. Maybe your boss is walking around shaking his head because he knows how dependent everybody is on overnight lending and venture capital.

Suddenly, your "Libertarianism" doesn't look so good when you might just end up on the outside looking in. You might just end up as the guy without the job. Maybe three months from now, Prime Minister (with a majority) Harper will be looking out at you and saying, "Hey, take care of yourself". Suddenly the shining light of independent, capitalist, free-market glory doesn't look so good.

Maybe you start to realize, in tough times, you would rather have at the helm people who have historically given a damn about other human beings.

Maybe you don't vote Conservative because, quite simply, selfishness points you in other direction. Instead of "Hey, take care of yourself", your cry will become, "Hey, someone take care of me!"

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Taliban Stephen

Can we start calling him Taliban Harper?

I was disappointed that I didn't see any mention of Listeriosis in last night's debate. Why aren't we beating up the government over the 19 people they killed with the deregulation of the meat inspections?

But this comes from the Globe and Mail's translation of Stephen Harper:

"Mr. Harper, on negotiations with the Taliban?" asked moderator Stéphan Bureau.

"This is not entirely new," said Mr. Harper. "The government of Afghanistan has made local efforts from time to time with the Taliban. President Karzai is looking for a political solution and a democratic debate instead of a debate with arms. It's an essential part of his program and I support it."

So the Conservatives couldn't stop calling Layton "Taliban Jack" for saying that a peaceful solution should be found.

I presume, since they aren't hypocrites, they'll start calling our current Prime Minister "Surrendering Steve" or "Osama bin Harper".

Of course they will.

Update: Apparently there was mention of the Listeriosis outbreak. I must have run my find incorrectly. Thanks, Scott.

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Hypocrisy or Irony?

(When there's enough sick people to take care of, you end up doing all your blogging at once, in the evening, when you get them to bed.)

It's hard to tell, sometimes, whether what you're seeing is hypocrisy or irony. If Kurt Vonnegut had written the plot, I'd know. If it were Mike Harris telling me that teacher testing was meant to "improve education" when we had Snobelen on tape telling us that we wants to take the government "out of the education business", I'd know it was hypocrisy.

So when the Conservatives tell me that they changed meat packing plant inspections because of their belief in the free market, I have to wonder if they really believe in the free market.

The Conservatives go completely off message when they send $80 million to a dead Ford plant in Windsor in a painfully, embarrassingly transparent attempt to buy votes. If the free market is really working properly, Mr. Harper, why don't you let that Ford plant die while the people who are invested in proper technology prosper? Why are you propping up a company that the all-knowing, benevolent god you call the Free Market has decided to kill?

Is that hypocrisy, or are you merely running your government ironically now? Next up you'll be telling us that it's okay for a Prime Minister to manipulate election dates to his own best advantage, or dropping those anti-abortion bills, or appointing Senators, or stealing MPs from other parties right after election day, or ... well, never mind.

(h/t to Jay at the Sleveen Institute)

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