Your Assignment, Should You Choose to Accept

Loyal DAMMIT JANET! readers, I have an assignment for you today.

I want you to send these two links to your cranky Uncle Bob and your tax-hating Cousin Laura and ask them if they are OK with this spending by the CONtempt Party government.

Item 1: Secret spending on consultants.

A Star investigation has found 90 per cent of the $2.4 billion paid out in the past decade comes with no description of the work done — and more than a dozen departments refuse to provide details when pressed.

Item 2: Economic Action Scam.

Those TV ads are still airing more than six weeks after the budget was read in Parliament.

Liberal MP Scott Brison said his research shows each single ad spot on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada is costing taxpayers about $95,000.

That's enough to pay the federal contribution toward 32 summer student jobs for the season, said Brison.

According the government's annual advertising reports and recent cabinet approvals, the Conservatives have spent at least $113 million on EAP-specific ads since 2009.

And that's not even counting the $3.1 billion missing in anti-terror spending, the egregious costs of War of 1812 commemorations, F-35 and other military boondoggles. Et fucking cetera.

If your fiscally conservative relllies start blubbering about AdScam, show them this.

[Sheila Fraser] found that $100 million was paid to a variety of communications agencies in the form of fees and commissions and said the program was basically designed to generate commissions for these companies rather than to produce any benefit for Canadians.

So. A hundred million dollars in AdScam brought down a government. Wanton and secretive misuse of BILLIONS of our money creates nary a blip in the Canadian consciousness.

I don't understand. Do you?

Image sources.

Propaganda: Haz We Had Enuff Yet?

This is what set off my rage-o-meter yesterday.

Canadians may be growing weary of - even hostile to - all those Economic Action Plan ads the Harper government has been pumping out for the last four years.

Eight polls the Finance Department commissioned between 2009 and 2012 suggest the TV, radio, print and Internet ads are starting to fizzle - and annoying some people.

. . .
The eight surveys, commissioned from four polling firms for almost $300,000, have asked the same core questions of random samples of 1,000 people contacted by telephone.

'Even hostile'? Everyone I know is thoroughly and MASSIVELY enraged by the ads and billboards and website badges and and and. . .

It is, quite simply, propaganda.

And clearly not very smart propaganda, because it is not working.

But, in a move that tells you everything you need to know about this truth- and evidence-averse gang of vandals, they're going to keep pouring our dough down that money-pit.

The Harper government continues to buy ad time for its Economic Action Plan, including for Super Bowl Sunday football just last month, when Human Resources and Skills Development bought a series of pre-game ads featuring the EAP logo. The coming 10-week ad campaign by the Finance Department, which launches Monday, will reprise last fall's version.

Today's rage-o-meter was set off by spending yet more dough on focus groups to tweak the CONjob tarsands propaganda.

Focus-group testing on what the Harper government calls its Responsible Resource Development campaign found the advertising to be light on facts but uplifting and patriotic, according to a government-commissioned study.

The fruits of that taxpayer-funded labour will again be on display this spring as a second wave of ads — designed to persuade Canadians of "the importance and impact of Canada's energy sector" — hits the air.

Natural Resources Canada has budgeted $9 million in the current 2012-13 fiscal year for ads that show a cross-section of resource industries in a job-friendly and environmentally sensitive light.

What? The oily companies we fund with corporate welfare can't afford their own fucking propaganda?

The ads repeat and repeat and repeat ad nauseum.

But mostly they are INSULTING.

Yes, fellow and sister citizens, they really do think we are that stupid.

For the full picture of how this government is pissing our money up the propaganda rope, look at this.

Surely this bullshit has far outstripped Adscam by now.

I'm not great at naming things, but this needs a catchy title. Suggestions? #CONprop?

Also. Paging Stephen Lautens for a suitable Demotivational Poster on Propaganda.