Hawnwatch Day 1:

Edmonton Centre Conservative Party Candidate Laurie Hawn claims government not responsible for interest rates.

Page A16 today's Edmonton Journal Laurie Hawn on low interest rates:

"They've taken advantage of it as any government would... they have nothing to do with interest rates."

So I thought I'd go to the memoirs of the last person to sit as Canadian finance minister for the entirety of three consecutive parliaments, the Hon. Donald Flemming. He stated in response to a question that the government does not set interest rates directly (this before the Bank of Canada act was amended in light of the Coyne Affair) But, he goes on to make this cogent point on Page 75 of volume two of his memoir, "So Very Near," an exacting account of the political life of a finance minister:

Governments as borrowers can help to control interest rates by reducing the demand, that is to say, by avoiding deficits and diminsihing expenditure. This is a simple lesson, which politicians dislike to learn and fear to teach and the public is often reluctant to grasp.

So yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus, apparently he's running for the Conservative Party and either doesn't think that massive deficits will crowd out other Canadian borrowers or thinks that they're willing to buy economic fiction.

Behold the cornucopia!

Also Steve Smith has been cut off until he continues blogging... Er, not by me... not that there's anything wrong with that.

There's hyperoble, and then there's someting a million times worse than the vilest thing you can imagine.

The Honourable leader of the opposition said that the Liberals were in league with a criminal organisation. God Damn. If Stephen Harper can actually back this up it would be the greatest scandal in the democratic world in more than a hundred years. No foolin. But you know what If he had this information, he'd have already tabled it. The Liberals could map out the government spending strategy for the next 200 years, all the way to when our houses will be made out of Candy and the work week will be 20 minutes, and they'd still lose the election. So If the Grits were in league with organised crime, say a biker gang or, better yet, foreign mafiosos it would be the end of them forever in dramatic fashion. They wouldn't get 16%. So why didn't Stephen table the evidence that day, since, as he said, the Liberals are in league with organised crime. Remember he didn't say tantamount to, didn't say behaved as if they were, said they were involved with organised crime. I'll tell you why he didn't table evidence. Parliamentary privilidge. There are fifteen rooms in this country where you can slander anybody and get away with it. The Legislative Assemblies, the House of Commons, and the Senate chambers. The laws don't apply in parliament due to a priciple called parliamentary supremacy. Parlaiment is supposed to be all powerful in Canada, therefore that green chamber has a special soverignty all its own. It is the only true sanctuary in the country. And thus the best way that you can tell if someone is lying in the chamber is if the person whom they're accusing demands they repeat the allegation outside the house. The Grits asked Harper to take it outside, but he demured. If I were on the government benches, firstly I would have sold my soul a long time ago so as to numb the pain, but secondly I would want to call Stephen Harper a Liar. But I could not, because it is considered unparliamentary (read not allowed) language. However, I would say that the Hon. Leader of the opposition had:

Loosed
Innacurate
Epithets
Deliberately

Let he who is with sin cast as many stones as they think will win them the election.

So Will wants to play hardball. Good. The Conservatives are far from blameless in the ethics game. Some of you might have heard of David Orchard. 2-time Progressive Conservative leadership candidate, and one time Progressive Conservative candidate, (the highest 2000 PC vote total in Saskatchewan) Well in 2003 David Orchard lost the PC Leadership by a substantial, but not embarassing margin. Actually he was able to parlay his delegate strength into a signed committment from the winner, Peter MacKay to not merge with the Canadian Alliance. Peter did anyway, throwing away what little political credibility someone who worked for Karlheinz Schreiber in the 90's has.

The PC's allowed people to get tax receipts for donating to leadership campaigns by bouncuing those receipts through the party. The cheques, totalling $55,000 were promised turned over in a period of 48 hours. Also a $15,000 deposit for not breaking any rules during the leadership race was owing to Mr. Orchard, for a total of approximately $70,000. This was in December of 2003. It is nearly two years later. Where's David Orchard's money? In Conservative Party coffers. He started by politely asking for it back, no small feat given the incredible burden that a 70 K puts on an organic farmer's cash flow.

Consider, if you will, that if the federal government stole $70,000 from every Canadian citizen (approx. 32 million) that would amount to $2.24 Trillion dollars. La Scandalle, $44 Million about $1.40 per person. But hey, There were only PC's that had their money misdirected. And only about a quarter of them were Orchardites. PC's claimed about 40,000 Members. About 10,000 supported David Orchard. So this was only about $7 per Orchardite (Plus their $10 membership fee accepted in what feels to many klike bad faith) So it's really only proportionately the size of 5 sponsorship scandals.

But hey, the Conservatives didn't misuse tax payer dollars, only tax payer subidized donations. I'm sure that with this kind of inclusiveness you can trust them with the public purse. But hey, William McBeath says I'm being too picky here. The Conservatives are willing to give David his money back as long as in the settlement he agrees to give up his rights to sue the Conservative Party over any issue and also never speak of the issue again. You see they don't want him going around the country holding a little thing like deprivation of a Canadian citizen and his financial health over thier heads. Fortunately as the Hill Times reported (March 28 – April 3, 2005) the judge presiding:

Ontario Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt dismissed a motion by the Conservative Party of Canada to have Mr. Orchard accept a settlement and sign a broad "mutual release" that would prevent him from using "the allegations in [his] statement of claim...in any subsequent or future context."

Quoth Saskatchewan VP (For the Progressive Conservatives when they still existed in that form) Marjaleena Repo:

"They’re claiming they’re doing that to prevent mischief by David Orchard, meanwhile they are the ones who have taken the money."

Also:

“These are the people [Conservative MPs] who are constantly standing up in the House of Commons and saying to the Liberal government, ' Give back the money' over the sponsorship scandal, but this is a very embarrassing issue in their own backyard," Ms. Repo said.

The Conservatives want to ban David Orchard, and themselves as well (how charitable), from referring to the claim and the incidents giving rise to it.

If you hit me with a car, and we settle on your personal liability, I'm still gonna talk about it.

For that matter if your party receives monies to which it isn't entitled and then returns them, the Conservatives apparently believe that that should be the end of the matter. Yet their current conduct doesn't suggest as much.

How about a little consistency? Why isn't Stephen Harper asking why Conservatives aren't in jail?

Probably because they know enough to keep their mouths shut after they leave the house.

Note to Will. Just because the other guy screwed up does NOT give you a free pass to screw up too.

J'accuse.

WOW. Has it been a week an a half? We're verging on Laurie Hawn Territory here, so I bet post all of my partisan crap here.

Quoth fellow PC hack Brian Marlatt:


The House,
We are rushing toward an unwanted and unnecessary Christmas election. It is unwanted because it is Christmas and winter already in many places. It is unnecessary because it serves no one except the opposition parties who place their own ambitions ahead of justice and the people interests and opinions. It is unwanted and unnecessary because justice cannot be served until the second Gomery report is received. It is wanted only by those who desperately want to benefit from a rush to judgement. It is about shallowest of politics and for that reason many are unlikely to vote.
The irony is, it may change nothing. The Liberals, who would now be a majority government except for the sponsorship scandal, will only form a new majority if Canadians are completely disgusted by the Harper crowd. The Reform Conservatives are as unelectable as they were under their earlier names, the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. The NDP, which could be a spoiler by taking back NDP seats from the NDP of the right in the West and soft Liberal seats in the East, can influence but can never achieve power. And the Bloc doesn want to be in Canada.
The fact is there isn an alternative to the Liberals any longer.
The only good that can come of the expected unwanted and unnecessary Christmas election is if voters punish the opposition parties enough - Mr. Harper party in particular - so that the work of rebuilding a strong, legitimate, alternative to the Liberals can begin. Change first requires the return of the Tories of Confederation.
Brian Marlatt
White Rock, BC
Progressive Canadian (PC) Party

Well said...ish We need us some classical conservatives back in office. In the last federal election Flora MacDonald voted NDP! Brian Peckford didn't vote! Those of you who knew who neither of them were checked out Wikipedia!

Quoth my leader Tracy Parsons:

No one should have to say: "I'm the sorriest Tory that ever lived, . . . I'm an orphan. I'm so disenfranchised I don't know who to vote for." (Toronto Star)

I hear dark rumours that David Orchard is going Grit. I shudder, not least of all because I promised him my support for this federal election if he got off his combine and ran. Quoth Spider Jereusalem: (Watch out kiddies this could get profane...)




Crap.


There you go, a tory approved cop out

In other political hackery news:

Um. No Liberals have broken down in tears and claimed that they were behind my appearance in the 2004 federal election. Proves nothing, but I'll let you know that thanks to my f2f the most economically put upon figure in the Tisdall campaign is me. After that Patrick Tisdall (My Dad) with 500 Dawn Golding, bookstore clerk with 200, Sherry Lavery, PC nominee in Edm. Mill Woods Beaumont, with 100 as well as Orchardite Jonathan Redekopp, veteran of the 2002 Edmonton convention, with 100, some couple in BC with 100 and a couple in Oliver (114 st and 102 ave... ish who felt guilty enough to give us 25 bucks) these are the people behing my party, the fact that I cant get my expesnes to balance owing to a missing receipt or bank statement is upsetting, but ministers are public servants, not civil servants.

Anne has been invisible since Edmonton lost the SPAR contract. Laurie Hawn has switched to mom and apple pie and why the Grits hate both, and the increasingly shrill William McBeath (Smith, earlier) hates the Globe and Mail even more. (noisefromtheright.blogspot.com)

Things bode even worse for Albertan Liberals. Not so good for real Albertan Tories Either.

Much darkness, less alcohol, more drunken clubbers. I hear something deep fried calling my name.

I know everybody wants a slice of this new 'ethical' politics thing, but:

Stephen Harper's assertion, that he is not in violation of the law by not registering as a lobbyist as head of the National Citizens Coalition, is likely true, it is then very disappoinging that he instead of broadening the terms of who is and isn't a lobbyist, he instead moved to ban elected officials who cease to serve from going into the non-partisan public policy sector (AKA lobbying, either publicly as in the NCC's case or privately as many corporations do) instead of broadening the definition of who is and isn't a lobbyist.

What Mr. Harper's proposed legislation will do is increase the financial loss that an MP suffers for leaving his or her job. The obvious result of this will be to strengthen party discipling and weaken the ability of MP's to represent their constituents. I'm sure that as an economist Mr. Harper had considered the policy implications of an increased disincentive to quitting or bringing about one's dismissal as a Member of Parliament, or Minister of the Crown.

Thank you William.

Fortunately William McBeath is an individual who is willing to dialougue with some degree of respectibility and he has been so kind as to remove the allegation that my campaign received the support of the Liberal party from his blog. The allegation was a surprise to me and I am in contact with the LPC to get a corroboration. I mean, who would ever have believed that the Liberals would pull the Mulroney Manouvre TM, wherein a candidate who is believed to be weaker is backed so as to avoid a final vote directly against the stronger candidate? (it is believed that Mulroney delegates added to Clark's vote total to put him past John Crosbie and on to the final ballot at the '83 convention)

I mean the Grits have been paragons of electoral openness! Why they were even so kind as to tell Dalton Camp that they were plying the voters with whisky the day of the election. Or there was their help in defining the politics of multiculturalism on the west coast in the 30's by letting voters know that "a vote for the CCF is a vote for the Oriental." And let's not forget the Liberal committment to meeting issues head on. This is the party that called a leadership convention for the day of the Meech Lake ratification deadline, so that John Turner's replacement could let the voters know just what he or she thought about the issue, wait that doesn't sound right. Or there was the attempt to delay that pesky redistricting after the Liberal win in '93, that was beaten down by the undemocratic Senate. And let's not forget the renegotiation of NAFTA and the elimination of the GST promised by Chretien, It certainly takes courage for a party to vote against its own redbook promise, or to be so concerned with meeting the people that they lost a vote to adjourn with a paltry majority of 33 and what's more there were beaten by that famous vote counter Joe Clark. Yes, truly the federal Liberals are a party that exemplifies virtue in politics.

As Already established, who am I to judge...

But Willie has Ann Coulter on his non-Conservative party, but apparently what he considers conservative mided, links page.

Not holding him responsible for what the 'Coulternator' thinks but:

"In a 2003 Gallup poll, 72 percent of respondents favored a law requiring the husband of a woman to be notified if she decides to have an abortion. To put it another way, only 28 percent of Americans hold the position that married men have absolutely no reproductive rights whatsoever (but a lot of responsibilities!)."

As opposed to men who think that women should have reproductive rights as befitting, but be saddled with the cogniciant reproductive resonsibilities. Hey, Anne Colter is always objective with her analysis. Or naught.

My political life is a disaster, but that doesn't stop my brain from functioning... more or less.

So to summarise: William McBeath, the same one who glosses over the economy in Germany does realise that my campaign utterly failed to file its return for the 2004 election.

I had hoped to apologise when I knew for certian that I had the problem fixed / doomed forever + moved to Bermuda, but it's been thrust in my face for having the temerity to call the nominated Conservavtive candidate a hypocrite in so many words while speaking as a private citisen, something I trust I should still have the right to do under a Harper government, regardless the spin-monkeys trying to bury me in the concrete of my own incompetence. Willie boy decided to mention that I was 'not without sin,' with which I cannot disagree. However I never attacked another candidate for improper ability to conform with Elections Canada guidelines, rather I attacked them for thier intellectual hypocracy (you might notice my indignation that, under Anne McLellan's ministry, Sinclair Stevens was tear gassed as an observer at the FTAA conference in Quebec City, or perhaps Grit complicity in the hate speech laws, to realise that I am nearly as thouroughly opposed to the Grits as I am the Cons), attacking the Fiberals on corruption while the Cons are still owing David Orchard $70K (That's for another post) or calling for a five year lobbyist ban while you went straight to the leadership of the CA from the head of the National Citizens Coalition, a group formed to fight the socialisation of medicine (AKA Medicare) And who either is blind to his own career path, believes that it is conducive to corruption, or just doesn't care, when he proposes a five year ban on those in govt. from crossing over into lobbying. (A rule I object to, though will likely never directly reap the fruit of). Furthermore, if Mr. Harper doesn't believe the head of the NCC is a lobbying job, then the definition of lobbyist is too narrow.

[Citation removed due to compliance of William McBeath to request to remove offending section]

I am sorry to inform Mr. Mc Beath that my campaign consisted of two individuals. Myself and my agent Christopher Murrie, both of whom were delegates of David Orchard at the 2003 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE leadership convention. I guess Mr Mc Beath would call us fans, much in the same way that Mr. Mc Beath is a Laurie Hawn Fan, maintaining a link to his blog stongandfree.blogspot.com whereas I would call us a couple of committed nationalists, in over our heads when it came to running a parliamentary campaign. The candidate suffers the consequences of a misfiled return that the agent bears legal responsibility for issuing, mainly because the law would like to retain the pretension that the candidate is his/her own person. This is just and I am prepared to suffer whatever consequences may come, even the statutory crushing of my Walter Mitty fantasy of the dream of a candidate's ascension to the prime ministership. If that is the case I can serve even more freely as the concience of the concience of the nation.

However, I am still a citizen and I consider myself entitled to pass judgement on those that go before me in the name of honesty and utter transparancy, including Laurie Hawn, Megan, McMaster, and yes, the tear gasing, cudgel swinging, landslide Annie. I would love to see nothng more that Laurie Elected... IF it meant that he served as defence critic. But of course that would displace long term lobbyist Gordon O'Connell. Who incedentally could use the time to prepare for his next appearance on Goldhawk Live. As a few weeks ago, Gordon was prime for a slashing attack on the Conservative policy to zero rate part of the price of gasoline and seven rate the remainder.

People have the right to know if their candidate's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. Crooks display intent. I'm a fool. I checked with the crowm prosecutors office and there are no charges pending againstt me. I called elections Canada in October of 2004, my failure to file was due to inadvertance, my failure to appeal was not registered, but it is mainly due to a reluctance of the lawyer to which I was referred to take the case filing for an extension, followed by complications my father's dog suffered on the verterenarians table, resulting in a sizeably increased bill, coupled to my lack of available funds to supply a retainer. (man, it reads even stupider than it sounds), on the same day that I was attempting to retain a lawyer for the filling of an appeal within the two week deadline of the failure to file. Really complicated and to a degree self imposed story that derailed my filing extension. My filing has been a rolling diaster, appropriately of my own making, but aided by the disaster that was my federal campaign. The grits take care of their own, hence the lbiera ability to file capaign returns. So, no William, my return of about a thousand pay as you go donations and expenses, +/- $100, failing to be filed is not the result of a Lieberal plot, as you well knew.

To the Canadian people I say this: Sorry. You'll make it up to the extent you see fit. Either through existing laws, or new laws, or thorugh your right to withold support for any future election bid I may pursue. (Gawd you gotta love elections.)

[Post edited to clean up the writing. I should have been in bed hours ago, but something kept me awake, and thus in a less collected state of mind then I usually am when writing my "typically verbose and overly-ambitious prose."]

... Fallin' like a piece of wax on the head of a termite, whose chokin' on the splinters...

In other news, I may be sitting in my living room eating potato chips wearin' sweat pants, but hey, some people just want to enjoy their golden years early.

Well, I just saw a snippet on CTV, but Martin exonherated of any and all culpability by Gomery? Chretien too? Corriveau the ringleader?

Holy $#!^

The Liberals may actually get post Gomery bounce. Welcome to the basement Stevie!

But still, there should have been some cabinet responsibility. And there was, we had an election where the vast majority of the Canadian population thought that the leadership of the Liberal party had stolen $250 million from them, there was a minority that would not have otherwise existed, and Paul Martin looks like an old fool now. Also, now we know a few hacks in the old boys network managed a 10% kickback on 10 million. It's a tawdry little bit of malfeasance and should taint all the people who ran in that circle, but no worse than the last clean PM surrounded with sleaze, some of it imagined: Mulroney.

Great Canadian Pie to be: 2 for sure, 1 maybe, 6 open spots. COMMENT ya bastards!

And note to the witty critique in Oct. 28's comment section: Shouldn't you be writing the little idiotic snippets under the letters to the editor in the Edmonton SPUN? Or maybe it's Terry? Hey, if someone has an IQ under 75 are they an idiot, or a moron?

Yep, I'm takin' the high road.