Harper's revisionism - updated

PMSHithead is off to Europe to add more selfies to his MASSIVE gallery of photo ops that feature mostly his-self.

This might be awkward, given Harper's first stop, and his government's crusade against unions but ... no.

InCONvenient perhaps, but nothing that a judicious pruning of facts - something that his Politburo/PMO excels at doing - can't fix.

The irony in all this of course is that a large chunk of the CPC base is composed of folks who escaped totalitarian regimes, came to Canada, thrived here and were CONned by the party's Reformist/Evangelical populist rhetoric.

There's a reason certain countries outlaw specific religious organisations, unless they're complicit with those in power.  Authoritarian political parties do not want to be undermined.  Added: Nor do they want religious ideologies competing with their own.

As our Parliament surely devolves into the very type of corrupt Stalinist government that Kenney and Harper denounce but only when it suits their purpose, one sane response is to continue to prick holes in their puffery.

Grand merci to Alison at Creekside for the above.

UPDATE: Now with added totalitarian goodness! 

The [Harper] government is expanding its surveillance of public activities to include all known demonstrations across the country, a move that collects information even on the most mundane of protests by Canadians.

The email requesting such information was sent out Tuesday by the Government Operations Centre in Ottawa to all federal departments.

“The Government Operations Centre is seeking your assistance in compiling a comprehensive listing of all known demonstrations which will occur either in your geographical area or that may touch on your mandate,” noted the email, leaked to the Citizen. “We will compile this information and make this information available to our partners unless of course, this information is not to be shared and not available on open sources. In the case of the latter, this information will only be used by the GOC for our Situational Awareness.”

The Government Operations Centre or GOC is supposed to provide strategic-level coordination on behalf of the federal government “in response to an emerging or occurring event affecting the national interest.”

It assesses the requirement for developing plans to prevent or deal with emergencies such as pandemics, earthquakes, forest fires and floods. It also monitors overseas situations such as the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

But the Government Operations Centre has also been involved, as an intelligence clearing house, in compiling information on Aboriginal protesters.

From here.

Hudak Hits the Road -- The Low Road, That Is

That Hudork, what a class act. After getting his ass kicked last night, or as Martin Regg Cohn put it, after he was humiliated, look what he had to say.

Tonight’s result has shown that public sector unions from across Ontario were provided with the perfect opportunity to concentrate their resources and lash out against the wage freeze we’ve been consistently pushing. They bought Kitchener-Waterloo and now we can expect the rest of Ontario taxpayers to pay for it as the NDP cut more budget deals to keep the Liberals in power.

This is bad news for Dalton McGuinty. He rolled the dice with an expensive appointment to trigger a by-election to try and gain his coveted majority. He failed and taxpayers lost. Even worse, he put off taking the urgent action needed to deal with Ontario’s jobs and debt crisis.

Now, more than ever, as public sector union bosses further entrench their interests in this minority parliament, we need to keep the government’s feet to the fire. The Ontario PC Caucus will proudly standup as the sole standard bearer of fiscal sanity and private sector job creation in this province.

Unions 'bought' Kitchener-Waterloo. Really, Tim?

Oh, and that 'expensive appointment' McGuinty made to trigger the by-election? He didn't. Elizabeth Witmer wanted out of politics because her husband has cancer.

Elizabeth Witmer put an end to speculation about why she stepped down as MPP after 22 years.

She said her decision had nothing to do with politics.

Her husband of 32 years has cancer.

Of course, we can't expect him to apologize to McGuinty, but he might think about apologizing to Ms Witmer for tacitly impugning her integrity to get a cushy job.

In related news, Hudork is trying desperately to turn the page and will release some kinda policy statement next week on health care.

How desperate is he? Will he pledge -- again -- to defund abortion?

You never know with a class act like Pandering Timmy.

Shrieeek! Union destroys hospital! And Timmies!

This is what passes for news reporting, in the Sun tabloids.

A hospital Tim Hortons in St. John's that was supposed to make hundreds of thousands of dollars to offset the cost of delivering health care is going fully private after years of losing taxpayer money.

Eastern Health, Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority, announced this week that it will hand over all its non-patient cafeteria services — including the red-ink-stained Timmies — to private companies.

How many prevarications did you spot in those opening paragraphs? Tim Hortons are franchised; whoever has a contract with the head company is required to hand over a large chunk, if not ALL the profits to the corporate owners. Hospitals are not-for-profit but you'd think that somebody in Accounting might have been able to crunch those numbers for Eastern Health before agreeing to a venture that lost money to private industry.

"We cannot continue to subsidize those non-direct care services when we know they can be provided more effectively and efficiently," Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski said.

Words taken directly from the CONservatives' standard talking-points manual. Will Eastern Health soon be asking patients to launder their own bedsheets and clean the bathrooms? That's *non-direct care services*, right?

When the Tim Hortons opened in 1995 in the Health Sciences Centre, Newfoundland and Labrador's biggest hospital, authorities promised it would net a profit of up to $300,000 a year, enough to "pay the salaries of seven nurses," then-hospital administrator Gladys Peachy told CBC News at the time.

Instead, Kaminski revealed this week the chain lost $260,000 last year alone, despite the fact it's a very popular spot, with huge lines every day.

Hmm how interesting. Could it possibly be that the budget advanded in the Tim Hortons' franchise template was based on part-time, minimum wage, no benefits staff salaries? And Eastern Health probably has regulations that require workers within its complex belong to a union.

But while the coffee shop itself is privately managed, its workers are unionized hospital employees, earning about $20 an hour, plus benefits.

What the Sun's union-bashing propaganda piece neglects to mention is that any revenue "lost" by Eastern Health went to Tim Hortons' investors and shareholders. And earning $20 an hour plus benefits, working in a busy high-stress environment seems appropriate to me.

Interestingly enough, it appears that none of the infotainment flaks who work for the Sun chain have expressed outrage about this.

The bill [C-38] increases Gov. Gen. David Johnston's salary from $137,500 to $270,602 starting on Jan.1, 2013 — but he's no longer exempt from paying income tax. His salary was hiked to offset the taxman's bite.

His salary was doubled. Some *taxman's bite*. Remember, the governor general lives for free in luxurious housing including housekeeping staff and travels first-class to exotic locations - all paid by our taxes. Where's the shriEEEK, Sun Media?

Meanwhile in BC - as illustrated by the photo above - the customers' seating area outside the Tim Hortons' located in a hospital was temporarily used for patients arriving at Emergency during an unusually demanding health care critical period.

Corporate greed

A joke for my virtual roomie and our dear readers, by way of Bouphonia:

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a ceo are sitting at a table with a plate in the middle that holds a dozen cookies. The ceo grabs 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

Wisconsin: A Canadian Connection

Well, well, well. That evil bank, M&I, that was Scott Walker's second-biggest donor and is today the target of mass withdrawals started by firefighters is owned by the Bank of Montreal.

Anybody with a BeeMo account feeling solidarity with Wisconsin workers?


(Sadly, I bank elsewhere.)

Solidarity with Wisconsin!

WARNING: Bad language.

Black Versus White?

Not inspired right at the moment to write. However, in the course of looking for something else, I came across this charming photograph.

After I stopped chuckling, I checked out the website where I found it - Molly's Blog is devoted to anarchism, socialism, evolutionary biology, animal behavior and "a whole raft of other subjects" including some very solid writing about labour and union issues from around the world. And of course, Molly's Blog is an affiliate of Progressive Bloggers too.

Good stuff. Does our friend and blogging colleague brebis noire @ the black ewe know about this?