The Harper government, Andrew Coyne writes, is far from normal:
In normal times, under a normal government, the Fair Elections Act would have been withdrawn by now, or at least be in serious trouble. The past few weeks have seen the bill denounced as a threat to democracy by the chief electoral officer, the former chief electoral officer, several provincial elections officials, academic experts domestic and foreign, and newspaper editorials across the country.
Thursday they were joined by Harry Neufeld, the former chief electoral officer of British Columbia and the author of an inquiry into irregularities in the 2011 election. Mr. Neufeld’s report has been much quoted by the minister responsible, Pierre Poilievre, in particular to support his contention that the bill’s ban on “vouching” — allowing one voter to affirm another’s eligibility to vote in a riding, in cases where the usual documentation is lacking — was needed to prevent voter fraud.
When it comes to electoral reform, a government needs support from those who normally don't side with it. Instead, we are treated to Pierre Poilievre:
To the detailed objections of its critics, he offers nothing but the same, and I mean exactly the same, talking points, recited without evident effort to persuade but merely to impress upon his listeners how genuinely uninterested in their opinion he is. To [Harry] Neufeld’s complaints at having his report misrepresented, he responds that Mr. Neufeld does not understand his own report. The inaccurate and out-of-context passages he had cited from it were, he told Parliament, quoted “accurately and in context.” If Mr. Neufeld did not wish to use these words, he blithely told the CBC’s Evan Solomon, he should not have written them.
And why have things comes to this? Coyne pulls no punches. The government will pass this bill,
not in spite of the opposition it has aroused, but because of it: because it has convinced itself that all such opposition, from whatever source, proceeds from the same implacably partisan motives as its own.
We are witnessing an example of collective psychosis
12 comments:
Collective psychosis is right, our own local Con MP, one Larry Miller, recently said in response to a rally at his constituency office against this bill "If anyone has legitimate suggestions on how to make the bill better I will personally deliver them to the minister, it is as simple as that,". Where it will be ignored, does he really believe his cohorts will listen? More on this tomorrow over at Democracy Under Fire!
I encourage readers of this blog to take a look at Democracy Under Fire, Rural.
Harper's team are all of Harper's Borg. Poilievre recites the same asinine, the Fair Election Act, over and over. Then there is the cohort Brad Butt, an out and out blatant liar. How anyone with self respect, ethics and morals can support such as Harper, amazes me.
Harper is the one and only Canadian PM ever, to be held in contempt of Parliament. Harper is the worst most corrupt Canadian PM, in the recorded history of this Nation.
As you say, Anon, Harper has set a precedent. He's the only prime minister to be held in contempt. Perhaps that's what historians will consider his crowning achievement.
As in psychopathic . . . think of Canada as the Bates Motel . . .
And Stephen Harper as Norman Bates, Ed?
Is there some understatement contest going on that I wasn't told about? This government hasn't been "normal" for,lo, these many years, stretching back into the mists of time. When dinosaurs stomped the earth, these people weren't "normal". So dear Andrew is just noticing?
This "Fair Elections Act" was so predictable that I predicted it. Divination isn't as hard as I thought.
An interview with an Egyptian protestor sticks in my mind. He thought Morsi was not fairly elected because he only had 51% (as opposed to Harper's 39.something% !!!!) of the vote. Idiot Canadian interviewer asks why he just doesn't wait until the next election. The protestor replies, paraphrasing, are you crazy?!!! He'll just use the extra time to bugger up the election system so he gets back in.
Mogs says: No I think it is much more devious;
Two decisions that took place in our life times have had a significant impact on our lives the first literally enslaved us through endless debt by government borrowing and paying interest to private banking institutions versus our public bank; Bank of Canada. The second turned private banking institutions into 'casinos' for the very wealthy known as the 1%. Also the 1% has proven it cannot lose at these publicly funded 'casinos' through the 2008-09 melt down and subsequent bailout. The federal conservatives under the manipulation of Harper have maintained Canada and Canadian banks were largely unscathed and did not require bailouts, this is a falsehood pure and simple. Harper and his hand-picked minions (no more valuable than trained seals) have out-right lied to the Canadian public over this and the media has been more than willing to be complacent with the lies originating in the PMO's office.
The first decision, called a recommendation in 1974-75 by The Basel Committee, which was a group of central bankers belonging to The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), (Bank of Canada was one of them under the Trudeau Liberal government), connived to send us into eternal debt slavery. "According to Paul Hellyer, from 1974–1975 to 2010, Canadian taxpayers have paid one trillion, 100 billion dollars ($1,100,000,000,000) in interest on the federal debt to private lenders. In 2011, alone, Canadian taxpayers paid the private banks an estimated $37.7 billion to service the federal debt—over $103 million each and every day of the year!"* Paul Hellyer is a former Minister of Defence and served in the Liberal cabinets of Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. The Canadian government has the option to borrow from the public (our) bank, the Bank of Canada where the interest would go back to the government its people and communities. We would have no need to shut down home postal deliveries, veterans affairs offices, search and rescue operations, national parks services, environmental protections and science thereof or world class scientific research stations effectively muzzling scientists. Nor would the federal government need to reneg on medicare, employment insurance, disability payments, senior supplements, veterans support etcetera to balance the federal budget. "Harper’s Conservatives have systematically and relentlessly undermined programs helping ordinary Canadians while instituting tax cuts and policy changes benefiting the rich."* According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Canadian "...banks received $114 billion in cash and loan support from both the U.S. and Canadian governments during the 2008-2010 financial crisis."* -continued next post-mogs
Mogs says;
The second decision was: "...that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet."* This literally created the no loss 'casinos' for the elite or 1% at the expense of the 99% through government bailouts and the 2008-09 crisis proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Who are these 1% and what is their agenda? Some of them belong to a billionaire banker fraternity based on wall street called Kappa Beta Phi and in order to be a member of this exclusive and highly secretive club you must collect equity worth a minimum of $1 billion in federal reserve notes. These people know outright that they make their phoney wealth by taking from the 99% whom they scorn and hold in contempt, that means you and I fellow Canadians. Here is how it looks observing them on the inside "A journalist who gate-crashed a secret fraternity of billionaire bankers has laid bare the booze fuelled, cross dressing antics of its members as they openly mocked the 99 percent and made light of the enormous government bailouts of 2009."*
This reminds me of Stephen Harper who long before he was elected in speeches to right-wing audiences made up of social elitists and 1%ers from all across north America ridiculed and held in contempt Canada Canadians and their governing social safety nets. After being elected he was the first prime minister in history to be declared to be in contempt of parliament and through that - all Canadians who don't agree with him. "The second minority government of Stephen Harper has fallen. Early Friday afternoon, 156 opposition MPs – all of the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloquistes present in the House of Commons – rose to support a motion of no-confidence. It was also a motion that declared the government to be in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share information that opposition members said they needed to properly assess legislation put before them."* Stephen then went on to cheat in the following election* mocking democracy to ensure a majority government so he could silence the opposition once and for all. He followed up duly by mocking our government oppositions role in parliament by shutting off debate ramming omnibus bills through parliament by the sheer force of his majority government and not ever on the merits of the bills and giving no Canadians a voice or a choice through open and honest debate. -continued next post-mogs
mogs continued
Now we come to see the quintessential Stephen scornfully and contemptuously laughing at all Canadians and the very core of democracy by going through with "The Fair Elections Act"* Stephen definitively has the same mentality as the wall street whacko 'Kappa Beta Phi' sentimentality visited above in their glory at home making fun of the rest of us. This is Stephen to a T, his boy Pierre Poilievre also seems to be enjoying deriding and ridiculing Harry Neufeld whom he scoffs at and says provides the very reason we need the fair election act, something is amiss here. For myself now that I am on to what Stephen (himself most certainly) and his hand-picked (selected carefully with a particular purpose in mind) minion sycophants in the know are doing is securing their own future currying favour of the 1% at the expense of both Canada and Canadians. Thereby cementing a place of (dis)honour for themselves in the 1% club and deriding the public the press and their role in parliament all the while laughing merrily behind our backs like the billionaires. It will take nothing less than the full-scale mobilization of the silent majority to drive these cancerous conservatives from government power, remember they will flaunt the law and cheat any way they can in this upcoming election starting with bill C-23. "But this is not a normal government. It does not operate in the usual way, nor does it feel bound by the usual rules. After all, if this were a normal government, it would not have as its minister for democratic reform such a noxious partisan as Mr. Poilievre, whose contempt for Parliament and its traditions registers every time he rises to speak in it." - Andrew Coyne: Fair Elections Act proof the Conservatives are no normal government.*
So all you non voters out there here is your choice don't vote in the upcoming election and be satisfied to be a laughingstock enslaved to the 1% who thinks of you as a cartoon character don't forget by your non-vote you will also enslave generations to come. Or you can throw off the yolk being placed on you by wanna-be 1%ers that masquerade as the Harper government who feel contempt and a deep repugnance for you by getting loud and getting heard; tell them to shove it up their collective a$$e$ or you will end up licking those same a$$e$ for the rest of your life along with generations to come. Remember you can change the future now and our future depends on it!
The cons were only elected by a minority thanks to the silent majority they rule the country with an iron fist even though in fact they are a minority government.
Mogs
* http://qualicuminstitute.ca/wpress/federal-debt/
*
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/12/13/stop_stephen_harpers_destruction_of_our_social_safety_net_editorial.html
* https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/updates/study-reveals-secret-canadian-bank-bailout
* http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/
* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2562087/Behind-curtains-Wall-Streets-secret-society-Where-cross-dressing-new-members-make-bad-jokes-Hilary-Clinton-drunkenly-mock-Main-Street-laugh-financial-crisis.html#ixzz2vDg3afnp
* http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-government-falls-in-historic-commons-showdown/article4181393/
* http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/robocalls-scandal/
*
http://www.burgomp.blogspot.ca/
* http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/28/andrew-coyne-fair-elections-act-proof-the-conservatives-are-no-normal-government/
History is full of dictators who got their start at the ballot box, ffd.
What it comes down to, Mogs, is whether or not Canadians are willing to be played for chumps. If we re-elect Mr. Harper, we really are fools.
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