I've Always Been Cynical About Politicians

But sometimes their cynicism overwhelms mine, which just means I have to kick mine up a notch.

Cynicism: An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.

I know that politicians want power. But somehow, like those ridiculous Survivor participants who are surprised when they are betrayed, I am still taken aback when I find out how manipulative a politician can get.

Harken back, ye readers, to the age of Listeriosis. It happened under the Conservatives, a result of their own deregulatory practices. People were getting sick. Some were dying. Minister Gerry Ritz made a joke about the announcements of death as being "death by a thousand cuts" to his and his party's reputation.

A lot was made of his next dark joke, "Or should I say cold cuts." But that's not what matters. We've all made dark jokes at one time or another. What matters is that his party's policies were killing people, that he was in charge of fixing the crisis and that he was more concerned about his reputation.

Yeah. Poor guy. All those dead people were just murder to his reelection chances.

And now we see Minister Raitt. This isotope shortage will mean human lives endangered. Cancers and other diseases will go undiagnosed. People could die.

And, like Gerry Ritz, she's more concerned about political points. Sure, I saw her apology (dissected here). She's had cancer in her family. So have I. So has everyone, I bet.

Somehow, I'm sympathetic. I've had to wait in emergency rooms. I recoil at the misery this will bring to my fellow humans.

Somehow, her first instinct isn't sympathy. Is there a spot on that tape where she demonstrates human distress at the situation? Some kind of, "My God, Bones, what have we done?"? I doubt it, but I'm willing to be corrected.

I'm willing to bet that she's just so far gone in to the "rough and tumble" of the this new politics she touts that she's lost entirely.

I know I'm being very cynical, but whose fault is that?

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That's your Democracy Dying

And it's whimpering away, quietly in the night.

Minister Raitt, quoting leading bankers at a meeting of Council of Chief Executives:

“They did it at the Canadian Council of (Chief) Executives, there was three presidents of major banks who stood up in the room — and this is not from cabinet so I can talk about it — stood up and said, ‘Ignatieff, don’t you even think about bringing us to an election,’”

Is this a real quote? Is it even close to accurate? Is it paraphrasing a more subtle, veiled message?

John McCallum, Liberal finance critic, had this to say of the quote:

“That’s absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine a bank president standing up in a room like that with more than 100 people in the room and saying something like that? It makes no sense.”

Yes, John, I can believe it.

I have no trouble at all believing that very wealthy people are indeed in control of our economy and our country.

There is nothing the least bit incredible about that.

And the fact that both Harper and Ignatieff are enslaved to their election funds is no surprise either.

Look what happened to Stephane Dion. He wasn't part of the business elite. He wasn't anointed by the wealthy. He received no funding and his bid for power ended.

We know who you people are. We know what you're up to. It's nice to have you out in the open, though. Thanks for that.

h/t Galloping Beaver

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The Liberal Mafia vs. the Conservative Punks

When the mafia comes to your town, it's organized crime. They hit you up for protection money, do you a favour, you owe them a favour. Sure, it's crime and it's bad, there's no question. But there's also no question that it's organized.

And so it was with the Liberals and their Sponsorship Scandal. The Scandal was a well organized scam within the silliness of the Sponsorship program. Money was syphoned away. Kickbacks were attained. The government and the people were ripped off, but you had a sense that the thing had been carefully planned.

When a bunch of illiterate teenage punks comes in to your town, they like to swarm old people, mug children, beat up old ladies, set things on fire and generally vandalize your life for kicks.

That's how the Conservatives are. One of them leaves secret documents at his girlfriend's house. The other ones leaves other documents at a broadcast studio and then, infantile, the whole things gets blamed on an underling. Then they start selling off silver that doesn't even belong to Canada but to Buckingham Palace.

I get the vague impression that our government is being run by a bunch of juvenile jackasses slowly vandalizing our country. Given the choice, I'll take the previous criminals and their well organized, quiet, respectful thievery.

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Harper: "You're On Your Own"

I think it's important to know, as a Canadian, whether or not your government has your back. It's important to know if the Prime Minister who flew a photographer to Cyprus to show off his generosity is actually anything more than an opportunistic hypocrite.

And the results are in:

According to the "federal factum" written by our government:

"States do not have a duty to protect citizens held by foreign countries."

"The judge erred by transforming obligations to respect the rights of children within Canada into a new duty to protect Canadian children subject to mistreatment by foreign officials outside the territory of Canada"

So now you know. If you're caught up in some foreign country, snared or framed by some local con artist, stuck in a jail cell and being punished by some third world warlord, being handled by some archaic, disreputable farce of a justice system ... well, now you know that your country does not have your back.

Someone should probably add that to the international travel advisory.

"Canadians traveling to all other countries are advised that their government will abandon them to any kangaroo court that kidnaps them. Please use caution when visiting the world."

h/t Galloping Beaver.

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All the Bad Things I've Ever Thought About Conservatives

All of them are coming through.

I've always believed that Conservatives create deficits in order to force austerity on the population, reduce services and get people to expect less for their taxes. The goal is to get poor and middle class people to hate taxes as much as the rich do, even though poor and middle class generally benefit from our level of taxation.

And while they're doing this - racking up record deficits - they sell off public institutions to make the budget appear balanced while ensuring future austerity via a lack of public assets.

As well, I've understood the strategy of mismanaging public institutions on purpose in order to denigrate them. Remember Mike Harris and his Tories in Ontario, slowly destroying our public education system and health care system so that they could shrug their shoulder and say, "What do you expect from government? Government sucks. Let's do private schools instead."

And now we see this happening in our federal government.

You remember that reactor that produces medical isotopes for the entire world? The one run by AECL? The one whose shutdown they blamed on "Liberal appointee" Linda Keen, whom they subsequently fire?

Well, the Conservatives are in charge now, having ordered the reactor activated over the safety concerns of the people charged with protecting our health. And the reactor is, as one would expect, malfunctioning and shut down with no prospect of a quick turn around.

So what's the Conservative solution?

Let's sell the reactor to a private organization.

I kid you not. Put the world's major source of medical isotopes in the hands of the profit-driven private sector. Give a private company a virtual monopoly on our health. Claim the sale price against the deficit so it doesn't look so bad. Hide the perpetual cost of this move in the distant future of rising health care costs.

It accomplishes everything the Conservatives could ever want: rising deficit; austerity measures; weakening public institutions; private profit. Some things just never, ever change.

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It's time to talk Capital Punishment

This happens every time an innocent person is killed in a stupid, callous or malicious manner.

This time the victim is an 8 year old girl named Victoria Stafford. Do the details matter? 8 year olds are, by definition, innocent of anything that could possibly deserve such a fate. Does it matter how she was led away by a person she recognized? Does it matter what was done to her? She was innocent. She was treated horribly and now she is gone.

And so it begins.

Let's kill the murderers!

I suppose I'd agree to capital punishment under two conditions:
a) we can be absolutely sure we have the correct guilty party
b) killing the murderer would bring the victim back to life

Because as I understand it, we can not achieve "justice" for Victoria Stafford with our present technology. The innocent eight year old is gone and we can't get her back. Even if you could, beyond any doubt, establish who killed her, what benefit is there to putting killers to death?

You can trot out all the arguments you want: not wanting to pay for the housing and feeding of the murderers while in jail; the deterrence factor for future potential killers; preventing these murderers from striking again.

None of those arguments (even though only the last holds up under scrutiny) make anything but a mash of the concept of justice. There can't be justice for Victoria Stafford. Nor for Kristen French or Leslie Mahaffy.

And what we have in this country is a system of justice, not a system of revenge. Other cultures have had revenge based systems. An eye for eye meant malice was answered with malice and the descent to madness was ensured.

Killing these murderers wouldn't accomplish anything except to demonstrate that we can kill them. We would not be a safer nation but a more brutal one. We would be a nation admitting that we can't defeat dangerous people except by sinking to their level. We would be surrendering to our bloodlust and bankrupting our moral fiber in the process.

Why shouldn't we put Victoria Stafford's murderers to death?

Because we're better than they are. That's reason enough.

Don't let an innocent child be an excuse for barbarism.

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Sanity with Bullying

There's never been a good system for dealing with bullying. Out of sight and out of mind until the victim fights back is the current policy.

So I was glad to see that the Asian kid who was suspended for fighting back against a racist bully has had his suspension canceled.

Victory, of sorts, although I think this is the funniest part:

He also would like to know why the school board sent a letter saying it would recommend the 15-year-old be expelled [from all regional schools], only to say three days later that the letter was sent in error.

Error? What kind of error is that?

"We meant to say that your son could be smelled from all schools in the region. Hygiene issue. Simple spelling error."

Or maybe: "We send out so many of these Regional Expulsion Letters that they go out by accident to the wrong people on occasion. Our bad."

One could only hope that they frequently come down this hard on actual bullies, but I doubt it.

Meanwhile, I dance the Happy Victory Dance. Hurrah for justice.

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