At Home in Hespeler

When the Conservative Party of Canada met last week for their Convention in Ottawa, Police cordoned off a city street so protesters could have their say. The along came the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and their debt clock. The clock has been on the Canadian political scene for twenty years, and was pulled out of storage last year, yet the only thing that has blown up in that time is government spending.

So when Conservative delegates reported the clock as a “suspicious vehicle,” Ottawa Police naturally did what the RCMP did back in March, when the clock made a visit to Parliament Hill, they prevented it going about it’s useful business. Ottawa Police detained the clock, and CTF staff while they investigated the suspicious horse trailer with numbers. Police were able to determine that the large numbers, counting upwards, where not a detonating device, but not without calling in the bomb squad.

Just shameful!

Watch the CTF’s video of the morons of the Ottawa Police force violating the charter rights of CTF staff below:

If you have a blog of your own, get some suspicious numbers to put on your sidebar:

<iframe src=”http://www.debtclock.ca/ticker/widget.html” alt=”” width=”210? frameborder=”0? height=”135? scrolling=”no”></iframe>

watergate - shawanigate - profligate Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Conservative Party Convention, CTF, Debt CLock, National Debt, Ottawa Police, RCMP

Who knew when I put the CTF debt clock in my sidebar, and offered the code to put one on your website, that I was opening a big ole’ can of worms.

The National Debt Clock (Picture courtesy CTF)

But it surely can’t be coincidence that the very day I requested the debt clock visit Hespeler, that it gets banned from Parliament Hill:

You can smoke pot in Parliament Hill while the RCMP watches, you can bring on a crane to hold up a giant TV for your rally but don’t you dare try to bring a small trailer showing the massive government debt on the Hill.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a spending watchdog group that has taken on governments of all stripes over wasteful spending, have been told they can’t bring their debt clock to the Hill.

“You can smoke joints, carry a coffin, wave your flags, but we can’t bring a horse trailer with a debt clock on the Hill,” said CTF federal director Kevin Gaudet…

Sorry Kevin, I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble.
Meanwhile, here’s the code to put on your sidebar:

<iframe src=”http://www.debtclock.ca/ticker/widget.html” alt=”” width=”210? frameborder=”0? height=”135? scrolling=”no”></iframe>

The current Canadian debt is:

watergate - shawanigate - profligate National Debt

In the 1990’s the Canadian Taxpayer Federation launched a National Debt Clock.

The National Debt Clock
(Picture courtesy CTF)

The twelve foot long clock got dragged around the country hitched to a pickup truck to highlight Canada’s growing debt problem. It was retired in 1998 after the federal and provincial governments started balancing their budgets.

With the return to deficit financing in 2008, the CTF launched an on-line debt clock. This year, after public requests to do so, they resurrected the original clock. It is currently being towed across the country, starting one week ago in BC, and ending Halifax at the end of March.

You can also get a Debt Clock for your webpage, and you will see I now have it on my sidebar:

To add a Debt Clock widget to your webpage, copy and paste this code:

<iframe src=”http://www.debtclock.ca/ticker/widget.html” alt=”” width=”210″ frameborder=”0″ height=”135″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>

or get the code from CTF. You can also find out where the Debt Clock will be at the CTF webpage, and request it stop in your community. I’ll be requesting a Hespeler stop, hopefully on a day I can stop by and talk to the CTF guys.

And Kevin Gaudet, if you can make it personally to Hespeler, there’s a coffee in it for you from me.

watergate - shawanigate - profligate Canada, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Debt CLock, Kevin Gaudet, National Debt

and you Lisa Raitt, are no conservative.

One of those great non-stories is Lisa Raitt saying the isotope scandal is sexy. Yes, we are talking about people’s lives. Yes it is insensitive. But does anybody believe every other politician doesn’t see issues this way, even if it dramatically affects peoples lives. Does anybody believe editors and reporters don’t look at stories this way, regardless of how much pain and suffering is involved in the story. Frankly, a little less hyperventilating from the latter would do wonders to decrease Canada’s hypocrisy emissions.

No, you want scandal that will stick, here it is:

This is an easy one. You know what solves this problem? Money. And if it’s just about money, we’ll figure it out. It’s not a moral issue.

And again

…it’s sexy,” says Ms. Raitt. “Radioactive leaks. Cancer.”

“Nuclear contamination,” says Ms. MacDonnell.

“But it’s only about money,” says Ms. Raitt.

For a scandal that sticks, pocket book issues can’t be beat. And of course, this is an issue that would anger the Conservatives base voters.

Lisa Raitt's Money Ball

The problem, of course, is that the other parties and the media, see nothing interesting in that quote. Of course  issues can be solved with money, that’s why it’s called moneyball, isn’t it? All the easier to throw it around with.

I, however, would like to see Conservative cabinet ministers view their job as something more than throwing my money at their problems. The country has a scandalous $50B deficit, cabinet ministers are caught on tape saying it’s just… money, it’s only… money, and everybody thinks the scandal is she has a mouth like an editor.

I wouldn’t kiss her with that mouth granted, but if your looking for a scandal, go with the money quote everytime.

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Watergate-Shawanigate-Profligate

watergate - shawanigate - profligate Chalk River, Editors, Isotopes, Lisa Raitt, moneyball, Scandal

I really had my hopes up on this one. It seemed such a natural. Hey, these are hard times for bloggers. We labour away day after day; basements get cold in January. People don’t hit your tip jar, they don’t click on the google ads. Up there in Ottawa they are throwing money around, our money, both higgeldy and piggeldy.

MacBook for Bloggers: 24-carat gold MacBook Pro

Alas! I have been searching through the budget documents: toilets and sinks; roads and sewers; paint for Gods sake;  shipbuilders and car builders; builders of flying saucers and hewers of wood;  sports, culture, newspapers, magazines … wait a minute…

WHOA!

New media. There’s a new media fund!

The Canada New Media Fund, administered by Canadian Heritage, encourages the production of Canadian interactive digital cultural content, and fosters the development, production, and marketing/distribution of original, interactive or online Canadian cultural new media works.

In recognition of the contribution of new media to Canadian culture, Budget 2009 confirms funding of $28.6 million over the next two years to the Canada New Media Fund, and $14.3 million annually thereafter.

Well, this is embarrassing. This was supposed to be a joke piece: they gave something to everybody, including the kitchen sink, what about us bloggers? Turns out, the joke is on me. And you, assuming you pay taxes.

MacBooks for bloggers appears to be a go. Sure hope it doesn’t fall in that nice new kitchen sink.

Ottawa, Parliament, pimply minions of bureaucracy, Showing the proper feudal spirit, watergate - shawanigate - profligate

A commenter on a piece on Gerry Nicholls’ blog wrote:

You are in select company Gerry.
Neither you or Jack Layton have seen the budget, but you are slagging our Prime Minister for it just in case it might contain something you dont like.
It is quite tiresome.

Add me to the company. Here’s what we do know about the budget: it will put Canada in a massive deficit position for the first time in ten years; it is based on the flawed theory that government can, as we Ontario conservatives laughed when Bob Rae did it, spend itself rich. The Bob Rae analogy, by the way, isn’t superfluous: stimulus of the kind we are dealing with here is exactly what Bob Rae did, and we mocked. We mocked because he was wrong and because it failed miserably.

If you are a conservative in philosophy, you cannot possibly support this budget because it is wrong headed and based on bad political philosophy. If you are a Conservative Party supporter, you should not support this budget because it could banish the party to the political wilderness, just as spending themselves rich did to the NDP in Ontario.

What Jack Layton has against the budget I can’t tell, it has all the makings of an NDP budget. But we know enough about what is coming, enough has been leaked that we know it is going to contain a lot that we don’t like.

Economic Fundamentalism, Gerry Nicholls, Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, Stephen Harper, taxpayers, The Layton world view, watergate - shawanigate - profligate

Back “in the day,” 25 or so years ago, I tended towards the drink a bit. Not a house drinker either, a barfly. One night a buddy and I were at the Cannonball in Bramalea (is it still there?) and we got sitting with this guy who had, literally, just sold the farm. He was sitting with (if I remember correct) $80,000 in his pocket and was on what you might modestly call a bender.

He decided to include us in his good time and the drinks were soon coming almost faster than we could drink them (almost). We did a thing were we would come up with a drink we had never had, and suddenly we were drinking three of them. I recall a few white Russians and black Russians, but truly little else. I have no doubt that guy woke up a few weeks, or months later with no farm, no money and one hell of a headache.

I thought of that guy today while reading about the Ontario budget delivered Tuesday by Dwight Duncan. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have decided to spend any surplus they find. In Tuesday’s budget that was an extra $5B they “found” and will promptly spend. As Terence Corcoran put it:

If the province had collected an extra $10-billion this year instead of $5-billion, it would have spent it.

He’s dead right, and that’s exactly what they said, if we have it, we spend it. $5B, $10B, $20B. It’s really the same spending approach as the guy who sold the farm at the Cannonball: he hadn’t budgeted on the money, thus it was found money, “hey lets go on a bender.” At the end of the day he had nothing to show for the sold farm, but boy, what a hangover.

It makes you wonder: what kind of hangover are Ontario taxpayers going to wake up with when Dalton and Dwight have finished spending our found money?

pimply minions of bureaucracy, watergate - shawanigate - profligate