Wednesday 1 June 2011

A double standard.

Whatever happened to Bruce Carson?

It appears our Attention-Deficit news-gathering organizations have forgotten him. Thanks to Red Tory, much remains of that disgusting chapter in the ongoing saga of corruption in the highest reaches of the Contempt Party's PMOpolitburo.

It's worth remembering Carson, in light of the treatment Kathryn Smithen received from a panel of Law Society of Upper Canada reviewing her application to the Bar.
“Despite her horrendous behaviour in the past, she has come to grips with all of the reasons that propelled her to act so badly and has made a commitment to herself and others to conduct herself with honesty and integrity,” wrote James Caskey, on behalf of the three-member panel.
From
here. The *horrendous behaviour* that was alluded to?
From 1979 to 1993, she was charged five times with 39 offences, she says, including fraud, theft of money and credit cards, and forging documents. She got 18 months in jail.
Smithen also worked as an escort to support herself and her daughter.

I do wonder if the Cons believe that funding a lobbying instrument for Carson to advance the Alberta tar sands development is *horrendous*.

A word of advice; don't be drinking and reading the priceless comments thread that follows Red Tory's blogpost.

4 comments:

Mark Richard Francis said...

It is apparently more important that we incessantly hear everything about green NDP parliamentarians.

The Mound of Sound said...

I expect in our new, authoritarian Parliament, Carson will be conveniently swept back under the carpet - for the benefit of our Ruler. Every key Ottawa Tory knew everything there was to know about Carson, going back well beyond his first recorded criminal act. One of them assures me the PMO was directly warned, repeatedly, about Carson and urged to get rid of him. Harper chose to ignore that warning.

Niles said...

Harper was proven right. No one was moved an iota about it. Except *maybe* the Aboriginal vote. And Harper is fixing *them*, what with putting out hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire *detectives* aka good old fashioned Indian Agents who will go out and marshal all the 'horrendous' corruption on reserves...and where ever else he gives them jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, does Carson get to go back to INAC/ANAC and take up the water contract talks again?

Anonymous said...

APTN did some good work and exposed the Carson-H2Ogate scandal. Then our right wing media, having been scooped, spent 1 day on 'oh look, they thinks they're real journamalists!11', 2 days on 'look! his girlfriend's only 20 years old! scandalous!', and then they moved onto the next super important thing in the 24 hour news cycle. They also asked if the PMO knew of his previous convictions every so often. It's very sad that angle wasn't pushed harder, not to hound Carson who already did his time, but because somebody in the PMO was big time lying about it.

The Sixth Estate has done an extensive job researching the entire Bruce Carson affair. There's information about the various sites that were whitewashed of Carson's presence (like that of the Canada School of Energy and Environment), as well as overall patronage in the environmental sector, which the MSM completely missed.

The Tyee has a large article about the environmental implications and how an organization intended to research energy technology was transformed into a government-funded PR firm for the oil sands instead. On page 3 there's a nice picture of Mr.-hasn't-worked-for-government-in-8-months-and-definitely-isn't-lobbying sitting next to the Canadian Minister of the Environment and across from the U.S. Secretary of Energy while the two governments discuss energy and climate.

The amount of patronage flying about is completely stunning.

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