Member of the corporate old white boys' club flaunts his privilege.

Or maybe Dr Tom Stewart is hoping his inexcusable yet regrettable malfeasance -- because he was caught and the MSM published it -- will ensure Premier Drug Lord will appoint him to Dr Williams job, in the same way that ex-premier Mike Heinous was awarded the Order of Ontario?

By the way, this isn't the first time this corrupt creep makes the news.

“We regret this unfortunate situation,” Mount Sinai president Joseph Mapa said in a statement to the Star on Wednesday. He sent an internal note to hospital colleagues saying it was with a “heavy heart” he accepted Dr. Tom Stewart’s resignation as physician-in-chief and director of the medical/surgical intensive care unit.

It was shortly thereafter that Stewart skipped town and got a soft landing in Hamilton.

He's cut from the same corporate corruption as *Dr* Merrilee Fullerton and Christine Elliott. Clearly these greedy supporters of privatized healthcare think the Hippocrates pledge is just an old Greek thingy that's no longer relevant.

If the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario still upholds rigorous professional standards for its members, it's worth filing a complaint about both of these charlatans. This is the email address: ir@cpso.on.ca -- their malfeasance has been reported, it is now their colleagues' and the public's duty to insist that CPSO enforce the relevant disciplinary measures.

UPDATE: Well, well. Our blogger colleague Alison at Creekside draws our attention to this latest development: Twitter thread and discussion here. I expect the usual *anti-political-correctness* rightwing chuds like Kay Fils will shriek something something about _Cancel Culture_.

 

If only voters and taxpayers could fire corrupt, malfeasant politicians like Ford, Elliott and Fullerton just as efficiently..

Premier Daddy Drug Lord's Magical Make-Over

A PR campaign calculated to deliberately *change the story* about the Ford government's Covid19 failure to defend and protect the people of Ontario is visibly under way.

Vomitrocious propaganda from a former Toronto Sun stenographer. He parrots focus group speaking points from the Cons' campaign to obnubilate facts about their malfeasance and lack of due diligence to prevent Covid19 deaths in Ontario. 

He cites an opinion from this Navigator™ flak, an experienced turd-gilder and lobbyist who susurrates slick BS with practiced aplomb.

[Ford] was dogged by controversy over rebranded, and subsequently defective, licence plates. He was feuding with the province's teachers unions during tense contract talks. And he vowed to launch his 2022 re-election campaign this year.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.

"He became 'Premier Dad' to everybody and he found that empathy," said Amanda Galbraith, a principal at public relations firm Navigator and former communications director for Toronto Mayor John Tory [..]

No, the "experts" quoted in the fluff piece aren't tripping on Doug's prime hashish. They are seasoned spin doctors doing their job: diverting all journalistic attempts to scrutinize Fraud Nation's malfeasant actions and depraved incompetence during the pandemic and the systemic public health crisis. 

Nothing has changed. Premier Fraud Nation exploits Covid19 for his own political agenda. The rightwing media amplifies his lies, trying not to trip over the bodies of those who have died and are suffering in private and hugely profitable Long Term Care residences.

More honest trenchant reactions to the Premier Dad® crap here.

A reminder of the harm and pain that squalid, corrupt Fraud Nation has inflicted upon Ontario people. From here.

 

This is an old problem. But now LTC industry lobbyists exploit Ford's *Open For Business* channels to receive federal pandemic $$$ and to guarantee retroactive impunity for their malevolent carnage.

Fraud Nation has hit the campaign trail.. so let's hit back, chipping away at the sparkly brass of his public relations. Let's expose what he's done, and how this greedy, sleazy huckster is paving the way to a gravy trough full of taxpayer-funded freebies for his criminal cronies, developer buddies, corporate hogs and other good ol' boys to stuff themselves. Opposition to the Ford government kleptocracy is organized and its genuine, grass-roots people and groups will lead the battle. 

Updated to include knowledgeable facts from actual journalists doing their work, plus a pithy observation from Fern Hill.

Greedy, corrupt, histrionic, fraudulent, conniving liars.

That is the Ford Family, of course whose members claim to be _The Kennedys of Canada_ but are actually and truly Ontario's Trumps. 

Here's a chart from CTV to help sort out all the players, including some of the more public faces.

Fernhill and I have written quite a bit about these crassly venal circus clowns at DJ! 

Teams of journalists have not only investigated the Fords' dubious activities but published such accounts widely.

A mind-boggling range of media and publications have covered this clan of faux-riche Etobicoke white trash in the last decades, from Frank Magazine to The Atlantic.

Landmarks!!! A tour guide to the stoopid.

There are surely hugely unlawful endeavours the Fords have facilitated which I hope journalists will soon expose, after lawyers have ensured all confidential sources requesting anonymity are legally credible. I suspect it involves international crime networks, real estate, gambling and $$$ laundering.

The Ford gals are a mixed bag of wacko: Kayla, Ky-Ky and Krista. Each one tries to monetize her family connections. But only *Ivankayla* dipped into the dark side where ignorant antivaxxers lurk. Such grifting involves celebrity super-spreading of fallacious propaganda about Covid19 and monetizing their followers' gullibility for profit, as that vile dickhead ChrisSky does.

Speaking of malignant narcissists, Premier Drug Lord continues to flaunt his meretricious incompetence, through the ravages and mass carnage his Fraud Nation government inflicts every day.

One last question..

Did Renata (Rob's widow) Ford's civil suit and her claims ever get resolved in court? Oh.. it seems not.

VERMIN.

Nothing that's been exposed by the MSM so far about Premier Drug Lord's squalid, corrupt pandemic malfeasance comes as a shock.

Everything that is known about Ford, his crime profiteering past and present in the public realm, as well as in the shadows -- points to a familial, connected network and political reign, rife with prevarication, grift, venality and quid pro quo.

Nothing illustrates this better than his Fraud Nation government hiring McKinsey to do its dirty work.

Facts about the consultants started tumbling out.

Ontarians respond to public money being pissed away down the grifters' abyss, aka Doug's gravy train.

What the hell is McKinsey? Oh. This explains why it is intrinsically anti-union, and how its brand supports union-smashing.

These guys who claim they only accept contracts congruent with their values. Okay then.

McKinsey's wet work. Its global record is quite horrifying, yet characteristic of private sector courtiers who enable and facilitate rapacious, predatory capitalism in the name of neoliberalism.

 

"To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspects are Illuminati, Lizard People, or “globalists.” They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.

The biggest, oldest, most influential, and most prestigious of the “Big Three” management consulting firms, McKinsey has played an outsized role in creating the world we occupy today."

Consulting firms are the true beneficiaries of the spurious *trickle-down effect* by scoring multi-million $$$ contracts -- with corporations that harvest billion$, to help them extract more billion$ -- or with murderous political regimes.

Recently.. McKinsey did not face criminal charges alongside Purdue executives for aiding and abetting this extremely profitable mass carnage. Did it turn in state evidence to avoid prosecution?

Ma$$ carnage. Just culling the human herd for fun and profit$.

Is Nigel Wright to Harper what Chuck Colson was to Nixon?

From here:

So it was striking to see Nigel Wright, as a witness at the Mike Duffy trial, cite the Bible as his motivation for writing a $90,000 cheque for Mr. Duffy without telling his boss Stephen Harper. 

As quoted in Bloomberg, Wright said: "I was doing a good deed, and this is sort of Matthew 6. ... You should do these things quietly and not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." 

Citing the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew reflects Wright's reported devout Christianity, but it was a newsworthy statement in itself to the biblically illiterate reporters covering the trial.

It may also have been a coded warning to Stephen Harper, because Matthew 6 is one of the most explosively anti-Conservative passages in the Gospels, if not in the entire Bible. 

Read all of it: a trenchant piece from the erudite yet humble Crawford Kilian.

Both fern hill and I have been posting for years about this toxic intersection of extreme christian fundamentalist lobby and the US-style right-wing politicking, as staked out by Harper's CPC for the purpose of gaming Canadian democratic institutions to their advantage.

Prayer breakfasts. Special privileges for evangelical lobbyists. Innumerable private members bills to undermine abortion rights, which has emboldened fetushists to erode women's access in the provinces. Purported maternal health funding for international projects defined by anti-choicers. Prohibitionists pushing bills that criminalize and endanger sex workers. Downplaying violence against women and children - it's all gawd's plan. Christian extremists supporting war weapons sales to Israel and Saudis. Fake apologies to First Nations and Aboriginal people, facilitated by rightwing nutjobs. Progressive christian churches are audited by the CRA or their international projects defunded — as directed by Steve. The list goes on and on.

A recent event was savaged on Twitter, then crutinized by the MSM now seemingly capable of discerning between an individual's right to religious belief and the blatant deployment of religiosity for the benefit of a political party, à la *Grande Noirceur*.  It was the curious incident involving Con MP Wai Young and an evangelical church.

The Duffy trial, which one hopes will be the tipping point for the well deserved downfall and destruction of the CPC, has been chockfull of dramatic moments.  Wright's testimony and reams of email evidence bears witness to the byzantine works of PMSHithead's Politburo aka the PMO.

Some random christian dingbat chastised us for doubting the sincerity of Wright's religiosity.

Will the Duffy trial accomplish what the Watergate hearings did in the US? Will Harper be exposed, along with his thuggish team of Lee-Atwater-and-Karl-Rove wannabes aka the PMO?

And what about the cypher that is Nigel Wright: was he Steve's Chuck Colson?  

It's likely Wright was pressed to duty by corporate interests with deep, deep pockets who bankrolled Steve's rise to power. This happenstance clever and useful instrument had one assignment: keep a tight leash on PMSHithead.  

Whether he was contaminated by the toxic brew of paranoia and fury that Harper kept at a boil in the PMO, failed spectacularly at his job or deliberately left behind evidence of Mr Party-of-One's wrongdoing... it remains to be analyzed ad nauseam.

Schrödinger's Shooter

Dear firearm owner. Thank you for reading.

First off, we will assume that you have good intentions. You own a firearm or many firearms because:

1) you hunt animals to provide your family with animal protein,
2) you are skilled and proficient with the use of these weapons and you go to firing ranges in the same way that golfers go to driving ranges,
3) you inherited these firearms from family members and you treasure the memories associated with these objects,
4) you are steeped in an ethnic and historical tradition of owning firearms to protect yourself and your family,
5) you are a US citizen who believes in second amendment rights,
6) you have voluntarily registered your firearm with a regulatory organization. Should your weapon(s) be stolen, you would report the theft to the police, and
7) you consciously remove bullets from the weapon; you lock the weapon and its ammunition in separate, secure containers to ensure the safety of your loved ones.

So far, so good. You seem to be a responsible human being, acutely aware that your firearms have the potential to be used to kill people or to commit a crime.

Now here's the challenge.

While there are firearm owners who willingly observe any of the above, there are organizations - well funded by weapons manufacturers - who lobby the US government to prevent it from regulating the possession or use of firearms in any way.

This allows irresponsible, dangerous, murderous, mentally unstable people to acquire firearms without any provisions for tracking or monitoring the arsenals they may be gathering.

This means if somebody reports murderous threats that an ex-partner, ex-employee, ex-associate has uttered against them, police have few or no records to verify if this individual has the means to carry them out.

In an odd twist recently, it appears mothers against Open Carry and the powerful NRA are moving towards a showdown; will the Second amendment triumph over motherhood?

And when people start openly carrying firearms in some US states under the guise of wanting to defend themselves against imagined or possible threats, we have to ask themselves:

Will this individual shoot us? We have no way of knowing if an individual holding a firearm is a responsible owner or someone about to deliberately commit murder.

Schrödinger's shooter.

Are we overreacting?

In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.

73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.

Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.

Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the US in an average two-year period.

In the first seven years of the US-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the US, however, every seven weeks.

Source.

You, the responsible firearm owner may think you don’t know anyone who would actually shoot and kill somebody or allow their firearms exploited this way but consider the sheer number of deaths from shootings that occur every year.

Fortunately, you’re a responsible firearm owner. We’ve established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, correct?

This does NOTHING to fix the problem, nor to indicate any goodwill and collaboration in preventing future mass shootings.  Who exactly, funds the Canadian National Firearms Association?  And how much did the weapons manufacturing industry pay Harper's Reform-Conservative-Evangelical party to destroy the long-gun registry?

The current state of firearms control in Canada, here.

Much gratitude to Shrödinger's Rapist, a brilliant blogpost that first developed this analogy with regard to a reasonable reticence that women may have when trusting men.

Buh-bye Shelly, don't cry...

Juxtapose.

Harper government Cabinet Minister Shelly Glover is rightfully under scrutiny with regard to $1200 *donated* at a fundraising organized for the CPC, held at a private residence in her riding.

Groups from the Manitoba arts and culture community, who lobby Ottawa for money, were invited to a fundraiser last week on MP Shelly Glover’s behalf.
Federal rules say cabinet ministers can’t solicit money from anyone who may have lobbied or may lobby them in the future.
Glover and event organizers said the gathering was strictly to raise money for the party’s local riding association, but CTV News obtained information which suggests otherwise.[...]
"The majority of these people were actually people who were friends of mine or board members or people that have been involved with the Conservative Party,” Glover said.
But the invitation to the fundraiser obtained by CTV News paints a different picture.
"Invitees are primarily members of the cultural community in Winnipeg,” it said. "Shelly is interested in meeting with you and hearing your views."
CTV has confirmed representatives from the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Manitoba Opera and Winnipeg Art Gallery attended.[...]
The federal ethics commissioner is reviewing a request to look at the event. Opposition parties in Ottawa have filed complaints.
Glover wrote a letter to the ethics commissioner, letting that office know about the event and what steps she has taken to deal with the matter, including ordering the $1,200 be returned to donors.
Glover’s office said the minister did not know people from the arts and culture community would be at the party until she arrived.

Then, there's Harper's Israel junket, an over-the-top display of pandering and fundraising for which Stephen Lautens suggested the twitter hashtag "200schnorrers" - a term that means sponger, freeloader.

The crass, greedy opportunism came to its logical peak with this spectacle from CPC MP Mark Adler, and then this cringe-worthy performance from PMSHithead.

As Harper and his government crank up the chutzpah, malevolently destroying scientific libraries and arrogantly engaging in corrupt activities, one wonders where, if any, might the tipping point be?

Who will be sacrificed as an venal offering to the deities of the CPC fake accountability-and-transparence scam?

My bet is that when push comes to shove, Glover will go the way of Helena Guergis and Bev Oda because that's how the Harper's boys' club rolls. 

$1200 versus the millions the CPC hope to raise for their 2015 election campaign war funds.

Beyond Adler's mendacity, there were also stomach-churning photos of CPC dauphin Jason Kenney and his gynophobic buddies reveling in the testosterone-charged enclave of Jerusalem's West Wall.

A personal anecdote about Shelly Glover.  Last summer I traveled to Montreal on Via Rail. In the business class car sat the freshly appointed Heritage minister and a small entourage of husky men, two of whom looked and behaved like bodyguards.

Not a single person in that group used an electronic device during the whole trip. No cell phone, no tablet, no Blackberry, no laptop. Nothing.

It made me wonder what they knew, and that we now know...

So prophetic, so appropriate.

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube it's going to be very hard to get it back in." - H.R."Bob" Haldeman

That is a Watergate reference.

Stephen Harper - ever the opportunist and at times, plagiarizer - deployed that quote when describing the political situation in Egypt during the Arab Spring when Mubarak stepped down, throwing his authoritarian regime into a tailspin.

We are reminded these days by the spectacle unfolding in the Senate and in the House of Commons, with regard to allegations of criminal fraud, corruption, collusion and subversion of the Parliamentary process, how perfectly appropriate that analogy is.

And we salute Corporal Greg Horton, one brave individual RCMP officer who has rigorously pursued this criminal investigation, interviewing many hostile or fearful people, and finally, sifting through hundreds of documents and an ocean-sized cesspool of obfuscations to shine the light of justice upon some very ugly CPC machinations.

At this point, some in the media are playing it coy, aware that the teflon-coated Harper may yet walk away unbesmirched by the volcanic eruption of shit his Con government has produced.

You can CON some of the people...

The federal government's public health and safety programs that Harper and his Reformatory thugs have been ravaging since he came to power, have been deeply cut.

Remember how Agriculture Minister Ritz made jokes about listeriosis deaths?

Which may explain why this toxic coffee-maker, a cheap copy of an Italian product, is being recalled 6 years after being released on the Canadian market.

Note that it's the Bialotti Coffee Maker (and not the Bialetti brand) that puts lead into your cup of espresso.














The knock-offs are manufactured by National Aero-Technology - Hangzhou, China.

Could it be the same company that made those counterfeit electronic chips that were installed in National Defence's new Hercules military transport planes?

The Answer: not a CON minister.

Must read from Sixth Estate today.

Question of the day: Is Theresa Spence’s Alleged Fiscal Mismanagement Serious Because She is an Indian, or Because She Is Not a Conservative Cabinet Minister? 

Everything you knew and or suspected about the odious, vile tactics of Harper's Politburo is exposed, with regard to this tactical leak to the media.

Next question of the day: Why is the "Indian" Peter Penashue getting preferential treatment from Elections Canada?

Answer: He is a CON minister.

Added: The graphic above.

A Smoking Gun?!?! Could it be?

So close, yet still no cigar.

Old-school investigative journalism techniques have been most effectively demonstrated for the young'uns by Curtis and Maher in this recent piece.

Several people listed as donors to a Conservative riding association in Montreal say they did not make the donations attributed to them by the party.

The donations – in the amounts of $333.33, $666.66 and $733.33– appear on the 2009 Elections Canada filing of the Conservative riding association of Laurier-Sainte-Marie, a downtown Montreal district [where] Conservative candidate Charles K. Langford, a businessman and professor, came fifth in the riding in 2008 and fourth in 2011.

From 2006 to 2009, the Conservative riding association collected $583,318.96 from 931 donations, many from people connected with engineering companies and law firms. It also distributed $376,739.36 – mostly to other ridings around Quebec. The Megantic-Lerable riding of Industry Minister Christian Paradis, for instance, received $41,841 in 2009.

[...]The Conservatives collected many donations at a big fundraising dinner held at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth hotel on May 20, 2009, according to the riding’s financial officer, Benoit Larocque.

[...]Senator Leo Housakos, who was then Harper’s key organizer in Quebec, organized the event. Housakos, a close friend of Harper’s then-director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, did not respond to queries about his role in fundraising for the riding association.

Soudas was recently mentioned in disclosures offered by witnesses in the Charbonneau Commission inquiry into corruption in construction contracts awarded in Quebec.

More DJ! posts with regard to alleged CPC corruption, dodgy fundraising, voter suppression and illegal election undertakings can be found here, here, here, here and here.

Stephen Maher and his other colleague Glen McGregor deserve Jubilee Medals ... perhaps the Order of Canada for their steadfast investigations and reporting into the nefarious and possibly felonious activities of the CON party.

CONvergence

From the CPC government that created a testerical brouhaha around Canada's Arctic sovereignty to justify the purchase of F-35 fighter planes, we now have the CON rebranding of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Yesterday, Heritage Minister James Moore announced that the name and mandate of the Canadian Museum of Civilization will be changed to create the Canadian Museum of History. $25 million will be moved from other areas of the Heritage budget to pay for the new museum.   

“This decision is a mistake,” said James L. Turk, CAUT executive director. “It needlessly eliminates Canada’s largest and most popular museum. While some of the current museum will be incorporated in the new Canadian history museum, it will not include the mammoth Canada Hall which is the largest and finest social history display in the world.”   

According to Turk, the government had numerous locations in the National Capital Region to house a new Canadian history museum without closing the Canadian Museum of Civilization whose mandate is to increase, throughout Canada and internationally, knowledge, critical understanding and appreciation for human cultural achievements.

“This is a government that has done so much to undermine Canadians’ ability to know our past. For example, it has made serious cuts to Library and Archives Canada, which is responsible for acquiring and maintaining Canada’s cultural heritage, and to Parks Canada which maintains 167 Canadian historical sites,” said Turk.  

Turk also expressed concern about the federal government’s revisions of Canadian history to fit its ideological agenda, such as its rewriting of the new immigrant study guide in 2010 and its misleading depiction of the War of 1812. 

From here. I expect that that PMSHithead's Politburo aka the PMO will be shortly providing MPs with speaking points for the purpose of discrediting universities, professors and knowledge, in retaliation response to this remonstrance.

The Harper government now has quite the history of tampering with organizations such as museums in response to corporate lobbying or its Reform special interest religious groups.  Taking over a complete facility to propagate its lies is consequent.

Meanwhile in Québec, the Charbonneau Commission inquiry into corruption with regard to the construction industry disgorges information and exposes practices that suggest corruption at the municipal, provincial and possibly federal level of political government.  I posted about these CON players.

Josée Legault has produced a powerful in-depth analysis, drawing lines between the *dots* that are Matricule 728, Charest's intemperate and deliberate obfuscations regarding the university students' call for a general strike, the demonstrations, the strategic deployment of the Service de protection de la ville de Montréal and to a lesser extent, the police force in Québec to suppress civilian dissent, and provincial politics. 

Legault called out the Premier on his deliberate use of the word "boycott" to diminish and discredit a general strike that kept growing and gathering strength as it became the way that ordinary citizens could express their anger against the alleged corruption of the Liberal government.

When constable 728 calls the artists she brutalized and arrested "rats", "shit-eaters", "assholes" and "worthless", she simultaneously uses the term "godammed red squares". This detail is not trivial.  The reference to "red squares" caused the director of the Montreal police, when he publicly apologized for the events of those Oct. 2 arrests, to specifically address "political profiling."  

Was the police mention of "red squares" accidental?  

In fact, this reference echoes the political discourse held by Premier Jean Charest and several of his ministers during the "Printemps érable." His spin on the general strike was fully embraced and repeated on several forums by media commentators; more populist voices have not hesitated to add worse insults.  

For months, versions of Charest's discourse was everywhere. The equation that emerged was as simplistic as it was false: greedy children + violence + bullying + Communism + left + anarchism + Montreal = anarchist student strike.  

The political spin was the product of the Charest government's strategy in this conflict. This tactic was to try to win points with voters since a general election was foreseen this year.  In April, I identified this opportunism as a classic case of political division and polarization for electoral purposes. The choice of this strategy came at the price of a marked deterioration of the political discourse in Quebec. 
Rather than defend its policy of raising tuition with rational arguments, the Premier and his ministers attached the terms "violence and intimidation" to a student movement that was mainly peaceful.  

I translated the above excerpts; I suggest that you read the full version of her blog posts, parts 1 and 2. Legault is rigorous in her overview; she reaches back to the 1960s and 70s to recall the escalation of state violence and the abuse of political and legal procedures by the authorities. 

I think that Harper is preparing to use such strategies and that his government is judiciously organizing the means to curtail any democratic opposition to his corporate agenda, with totalitarian measures if necessary. 

And, in case we forget the *ghosts* of corruption past ...

Double Whammy: Election Fraud + In & Out?

Last November, the CPC and its fundraising organ pleaded guilty to their violations of the Canada Elections Act.

Senator Finley is a lying Attack Parrot™© flapping his gums and trying to divert attention from his CONtempt Party's record of illegal and criminal practices, in light of alleged voter suppression and election fraud activities during the 2011 campaign.

Last week Le Devoir's Hélène Buzzetti did some good old-fashioned investigative journalism and produced information that seems to demonstrate that the CPC did it again. Here's an adaptation of her findings, in English.

Using the telephone – what else for this kind of story? - she established that money that helped pay for the Conservatives’ automated robocalls went through Quebec.

She called up Quebec conservative candidates one after another.She had them singing like canaries in a mine after a while.

Bertin Denis, defeated Conservative candidate in Rimouski-Neigette-Témiscouata-Les Basques, (that’s a trip in itself) admitted his campaign organization had paid $ 15 000.01 to the Toronto-based Responsive Marketing Group (RMG.)

Bertin Denis laid it out plainly. He was no more than a "mail box" for paying phone call bills to other parts of Canada. The party had sent him $55,000 but he had to write out a cheque to RMG for $15,000.01.

Money in, money out. (Sounds familiar?)He couldn’t remember what the cheque to RMG was for.

There appears to be a number of Québecois CPC candidates who claimed expenses that were actually in support of activities done for the national campaign, and not for their riding. Robocalls support.

We have to keep the pressure up; it appears CONs are currently trying to discredit the Elections Canada investigation with every Rovian tactic at their disposal.

Many politically engaged bloggers who don't support the Contempt Party for a multitude of reasons and voted for other parties were puzzled that the Bruce Carson corruption story didn't sink Stevie's boat.

The Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt provides some insight into how the CPC accomplished that, in her excellent article:

Quoting from StatsCan figures, Soudas said that while 92 per cent of Canadians claimed to watch TV news and 70 per cent claimed to read newspapers, in fact the real figures are around 50 per cent for both.

This is why, Soudas explained, Conservatives concentrated their advertising buys on more popular, non-news TV shows. It’s also why the Conservatives pay close attention to giving citizens the same clear, strong imagery that Canadians are accustomed to seeing in their consumer brands.

No matter how hard the Cons try to deodorize this corruption and hide their criminal actions, their *brand* still stinks.

The One Demand

This is from August 10, 2011. (Sorry for shitty quality.)



I had never heard of Dylan Ratigan, but he's got cred.

Ratigan won the Gerald Loeb Award for 2004 coverage of the Enron scandal.

In Ratigan's final CNBC broadcast from the floor of the NYSE he reported on what he called "an important story developing" that Goldman Sachs and "a variety of European banks," in his assessment and that of his guests, essentially "perpetrated securities fraud" and an "insurance fraud scam" against AIG — and, by extension, the government and taxpayers funding that insurance company's "bailout" — by insuring their questionable investment vehicles and, upon their devaluation, making claims on them to be paid by AIG "at 100 cents on the dollar" despite all of the markdowns "being forced upon every other" entity including the government, banks, shareholders, bond holders, taxpayers and homeowners.

"I think that it should be a bigger political issue than whether somebody bought an airplane ... Forget the private jets, forget who got a million dollar bonus. Fifty billion dollars," he said, minimizing what he saw as populist side issues to "the real question" of how "government policy makers" are to deal with the "problems of contract law" inherent in the agreements of businesses receiving government assistance during the financial crisis.

"The banks are being asked to take 'haircuts' on their toxic assets, why are the Goldmans and the Deutsche Banks of the world not being asked to take haircuts on their toxic credit default swaps? It's a real question. I will continue to pursue it for sure, I hope others will as well." Ratigan praised New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's subpoena of AIG to determine the bank payouts as "legitimate inquiry" and looked forward to "a body of lawmakers in Washington D.C. who are going to ask, it appears, some of the same questions that I'm asking."

Canada may not be quite as corrupt as the US, but thanks to King Stevie and the Contempt Party of Canada, we're heading that way at a furious pace.

h/t SherryBGood.

ADDED: Once the Contempt Party rams through its regressive new legislation, it will prorogue again until 2012. Then 'just watch them'.

Friends of the Cons

Yet another installment in the ongoing saga of which moneyed interests are bankrolling, lobbying and cozying up to Stevie Spiteful's Contempt Party.

*Gold Card* Baird recently flew to Libya. Did Rusty commandeer luxury travel arrangements for himself and the ConservaTories cronies in his entourage?

John Baird brought Canadian funding for efforts to build democracy and control weapons in Libya, but it was the guest list for his trip to Tripoli that pointed to another priority: Executives from big Canadian companies travelled with him.

The foreign minister flew to the Libyan capital with heavy security and secrecy, but also executives from Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, Alberta oil giant Suncor and Calgary-based pipeline-technology firm Pure Technologies.

From here.

SNC-Lavalin ... oh yes. The Cons recently sold the commercial operations of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to the Montreal-based engineering giant for $15 million.

As well, the RCMP raided their Ontario office, in the course of investigating whether bribes were involved in the award of a large construction project in Bangladesh.

More here (in French so use Google translation to get the goods).

SNC-Lavalin has a MASSIVE Public Works contract to maintain government buildings across Canada; accounting forensic probes led by Price-Waterhouse indicate that the current government has approved irregular and over-priced invoices from the engineering firm.

Not surprisingly, the CEO of SNC-Lavalin dismisses public demands for an official inquiry regarding corruption in the construction industry in Québec. One does wonder if he has received *coaching* from Dimitri Soudas in how to handle inconvenient media queries.

Anyone taking bets on whether SNC-Lavalin might have an inside track on building those mega-prisons that PMSHithead's *Hard-On Crime* Omnibus bill will foster?