A Battle Among Elites ... but we're included

The harpercons have done so much foul shit. But institutions such as the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, CSIS, Revenue Canada, etc., etc., are headed by corrupt sycophants of stephen harper's and they have kept silent about what they know. Because they are corrupt. Selfish. Debased. Especially those generals who sit there silently and let harper abuse disabled vets, nickel and dime them, when meanwhile, scumbags like Peter MacKay can use expensive military helicopters as his own goddamned taxi service.

But there are, evidently, members of the Canadian elite who are heartily sick of stephen harper. Something tells me that some of those were in the Senate. It was they who decided that out of all the corruption and cronyism, it would be harper's hand-picked trio of Brazeau, Wallin and Duffy who would be found contravention of the Senate's lax rules about expenses.

(Please note: The residency requirements for Senators are NOT confusing. They aren't open to interpretation. You have to reside in the region you represent as a Senator. End of story.)

That was the first salvo fired by harper's enemies. And it knocked him off balance. Never in a million years would harper have imagined that simply stating that Duffy was from PEI and making him a taxpayer-funded, full-time party bag-man would not be accepted by everyone. After all, isn't harper the prime minister?

But when this arrogant violation of the rules was challenged, all the wheels came off the harper go-cart. At first harper thought that Duffy would do what every other one of his subordinates would do, and play the party of the craven, self-sacrificing toady. But Duffy was different. This was too much and, besides, most of it was harper's fault.

So then we got the scandal as it stands; Nigel Wright finally decided to pony-up the cash to pay Duffy's invalid expenses. The PMO would try to manipulate the independent auditors and the Senate expenses committee. And Duffy would admit guilt and claim that he was paying back his expenses himself.

But then Duffy blabbed about it to some friends in an email and one of them leaked it. Then the RCMP got involved. They charged Duffy with accepting a bribe but didn't charge Nigel Wright for paying the bribe. They could have easily done so under the Parliament of Canada Act. The RCMP also interviewed insiders at the PMO and ignored all the evidence that didn't exonerate Wright and protect harper.

But we're not seeing this scandal in its full light. It seems that it's very clear that it's all about making harper squirm about when he learned about the Wright-Duffy deal. There's nothing about the wholesale misuse of taxpayer funds to finance Duffy and Wallins' partisan fund-raising activities. Nothing about the promises to have the audit go easy on Duffy. There's nothing about the RCMP's own compromised investigation.

Watch this all very carefully. This is one group of elites taking on another group of elites with every effort being made to ensure that the damage from this dust-up is kept within "reasonable" (to them) bounds. After all, does Nigel Wright look worried that he's going to go to the Big House?

Meanwhile, other elites (the Liberals and the NDP) are seeing this as an opportunity to hammer away at harper's credibility. (Even if the idea that harper is credible should have been eviscerated long ago.)

Still and all, this is an election. The one time us ordinary shlubs are given an opportunity to toss out one set of managers for another.

Somehow, after writing all this, I don't feel electrified.