"Big City Lib" Channels Paul Calandra

Fresh off his hacktastic support for the indefensible, cowardly Liberal Party support for Bill C-51, "Big City Lib" now channels the cretinous, disgusting harpercon hack Paul Calandra, by chanting that the NDP isn't above the law and should pay back what they spent on the satellite offices.

The NDP should pay its bills just like anyone else.  Until they form government, and then we all ride free until the banks kill the party.  But seriously.  Complying with Law would show folks that the New Democrats knows how to pay off debts like responsible people, rather than just racking them up like a union negotiator handed the company credit card for a night by a half cracked manager as a gesture of good will. Right now the impression you get is that the NDP has done as official opposition what it took the LPC and CPC years in power to achieve: they've become arrogant,  and out of touch.

Compare that with this:

“What’s also very clear to Canadians is the fact that you can’t use House of Commons resources for partisan political purposes, Mr. Speaker,” he said. “That’s why I encourage… the 68 members of the NDP caucus who owe Canadian taxpayers $2.7 million for illegal offices to pay it back.”
...
However, Calandra repeatedly brought up the NDP controversy instead of answering questions about Duffy.
NDP MP Ève Péclet referenced the autographed photo Harper gave Duffy, lauding the senator as one of his hardest-working appointments.
“What did the prime minister like so much about Mike Duffy’s work?” she asked.
Though Speaker Andrew Scheer reminded the MP that questions should focus on “administrative responsibilities,” Calandra replied anyway.
“Certainly touching on the administration of the House, I think, is very important,” he said. “That’s why there are 68 members of the NDP who owe taxpayers $2.7 million for illegal offices. This member herself owes over $25,000 to the taxpayers.”

 I'm not a die-hard NDP supporter,, but from where I sit, this satellite office "scandal" is about as genuine as the Liberal Party of Canada's other example of teaming up with the harpercons against the NDP, ... that of the case of the partisan NDP flyer.



Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but while the NDP did change the amount that party leadership candidates could raise from donors in the middle of the Liberal leadership race, they haven't been making a lot of noise about those candidates having to pay back their surprise obligations. I've only seen right-wing, harpercon commentators making hay on that issue.

It's a sign of desperation on the Liberals' part. I've long held that it is vital for Canadian democracy that the Liberal Party of Canada must die. I believe the recent NDP surge in the polls has less to do with Justin Trudeau's vapid, cowardly endorsement of C-51 than it has to do with the economic fall-out of decades of neoliberalism. Factory jobs provided middle-class incomes. They're dwindling. The public sector provided middle-class incomes. They've been continually under assault. More and more of us are in low-paying, precarious employment. More and more people are looking at their bills and their dwindling (or non-existent) pay-cheques and are starting to think that maybe it might be time to give those crazy, loony, left-wing, pinko, socialist, radical, blah, blah, blah, NDPr's a try.

Since I started this post (a while ago) I notice that BCL has repeated himself with his nonsense about the wretched C-51 Act.

And, by the way, if you wonder why I wonder at all the panic over C-51: why I suspect resistance to it might be spearheaded by a coalition of gassed-out but unfortunately not yet overdosed hippies and white supremacists getting too old for their leathers...its because C-51 is The Fourniers latest windmill to charge at.  Read the gist of their opposition to it here: its nutz.  But The Left has embraced it.  So maybe they're nutz too.  That's my line of reasoning. 

BCL might want to read this post from Dr. Dawg, wherein a onerous restrictions have been placed on a Canadian citizen for his having expressed support for ISIS.  

Driver has been released after eight days in detention, under a peace bond that imposes 25 conditions, including wearing an monitoring ankle bracelet at all times; no ownership of computers or tablets; no access to social media; no possession of anything with the logos or the many names of ISIS; RCMP oversight of his cellphone; an overnight curfew; and accepting “religious counselling.”
He has never been charged with a crime. 

Personally, even if ISIS were simply the creation of Muslim rage against Western atrocities in the Middle East, I could not bring myself to support them. The fact that they're the product of our ally Saudi Arabia, and enabled by the CIA and Turkey (among other of our partners in the GBWT) just makes this all the more ridiculous.

Besides, today it's expressing support for ISIS. Who knows what could happen next?

Support the Palestinian cause? Cheer on Ukrainian irregulars blowing up Russian ammunition dumps? Defend an armed uprising against the Chinese occupation of Tibet? Best think again before saying any of that out loud. When, after all, does lawful advocacy become the promotion of terrorism “in general?” You tell me.

Or, what about supporting the US military and its myriad rampages around the world? Or the death squads of Colombia and Honduras? Or the Israeli governments depredations against the Palestinians? One day things might change in this country and it will be the monsters in the Israeli government and their supporters who will be on the receiving end of the policies for the monsters in ISIS and their supporters.

That's what happens with dangerous legislation such as this.

I think its a sign of the Liberals' overall unfitness for office that they and their supporters fail to see the dangers when they're right before their eyes.

Sort of related; Murray Dobbin reminds us of the eternal full-of-shitness of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The effect of amnesia as it relates to the Chretien regime (actually the Martin regime) leaves most Canadians recalling Martin as the deficit dragon-slayer, saving us from our profligate, self-indulgent, entitlement culture and getting us back on the road to solvency. A few will actually recall that Martin chopped 40 per cent off the federal contribution to social programs -- but even that memory is diluted by another one: the legendary "debt wall" built exclusively of hyperbole and hysteria over the three years preceding the 1993 election. But few today would credit the fact, documented in my book Paul Martin: CEO for Canada?, that the 1990s under Martin's guidance was the worst decade of the century (except for the 1930s) in terms of growth, productivity, productive investment, employment and standard of living. Unemployment was higher during almost all of Martin's reign than it was as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. But what is worse, this so-called liberal actually made it happen. It was a deliberate strategy, fancied up in policy terms as a commitment to "labour flexibility." The social and economic carnage and the increased personal misery (an additional 300,000 unemployed) was staggering.
Yet because it was all couched in double-speak, Martin and the Liberals were never held to account. The finance ministry's senior officials convinced Martin that the principal cause of unemployment was not low demand but unmotivated workers. The solution -- make them more "flexible." The best way to do that was to ensure that unemployment remained high. The finance department's operating policy assumption (radical compared to the U.S. and other G7 nations) was that the "natural" level of unemployment was 8 per cent -- much higher than the 5-6 per cent that conventional theory suggested. But the spin never mentioned this number -- it was always about keeping inflation below 2 per cent, extremely low given the country was barely out of a recession. The Bank of Canada worked closely with the government, increasing interest rates whenever unemployment went below about 9 per cent.
The cost to the economy was staggering. The federal Human Resources Development Department calculated that Martin's excessive unemployment cost the country's GDP $77 billion just in 1993. Pierre Fortin, a distinguished economist at the Université du Québec à Montréal calculated the radical policy cost the economy $400 billion by 1996. A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) study calculated the total loss to all levels of government in foregone revenue and increased social security costs at $47 billion.
At the same time that he was pounding labour (he also slashed unemployment insurance eligibility and eliminated the federal government's role in maintaining decent social assistance rates) he was making the largest cuts to federal spending in the country's history -- including a massive 40 per cent cut to medicare, education and social assistance.
Throughout this period, the Liberal government and its cheerleaders in the media framed the exercise as "deficit fighting." But according to then CAW economist Jim Stanford, had Martin simply frozen federal spending and allowed unemployment to drop to 6 per cent, the deficit would have disappeared just one year later than it did. Martin knew all of this but two years after launching his "labour flexibility" program, he proudly revealed his actual goal in his 1995 budget speech to Parliament, announcing the massive cuts. He never mentioned the word deficit -- because that was not his target.
The cuts were intended, in Martin's words, to "redesign the very role and structure of government itself. ... as far as we are concerned, it is … [the] redefinition of government itself that is the main achievement of this budget. This budget overhauls not only how government works but what government does." Martin's biggest boast? "Relative to the size of our economy, program spending will be lower in 1996–97 than at any time since 1951."
To guarantee his handiwork would not be challenged by any future government, Martin, in 2000, introduced the country's largest-ever tax cuts: $100 billion over five years with the vast majority of the total going to high-income individuals and corporations.

So un-fuck 'em.

[I'll be back to the C-51 testimony next post. As if anyone gives a shit.]