In her stint as First Lady, Nancy Reagan did three things to show that Marie Antoinette had no imagination.
First, she had an exact replica of her bed shipped anywhere in the world when she was traveling for state reasons longer than three days and two nights because she liked to sleep in her “own” bed.
Second, she insisted that every bedroom assigned to her be painted red, her favorite color.
Finally, the workmen who constructed her bed-away-from-home also had to re-hang all the mirrors in the First Lady’s room so that when she looked into them she saw more than the top of her head. Details courtesy of Lewis H. Lapham.
The Harper government has more than a touch of Queen Nancy. It has already morphed into Versailles on the Ottawa. The facts, and the rules, are being made up as this crowd goes along – the usual decline into middle age of a government headed for the exit.
Not to say that the Versailles reflex isn’t exceptionally handy when caught with your pants down. Not many of us can just order other people to swear that we’re fully dressed. Only the Sun King himself – and a few chosen courtiers, have that kind of pull. Loyal subjects like the King’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent.
The confabulations, prevarications and whoppers just keep coming. Consider the furniture switcheroo perpetrated by Environment Canada (EC), and then covered up with all the finesse of the Three Stooges going at each other with mallets. At first, the department pays $141,000 to store furniture from a government office building that was being renovated. Then it decides that it needs new furniture, so the stored furniture now becomes the auctioned off furniture – almost. Apparently, Kent thinks re-cycling is for people who do yard sales. Ministers buy new stuff and work the unwanted junk off on e-Bay – even when it is the “BMW of furniture.”
It gets better. When EC’s profligacy leaks out, Kent’s office instructs bureaucrats to say the story in the media is false. (Not for nothing has he been fawning at Master’s knee long enough for the hero worship in his eyes to be noticed.) I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Peter Kent is not lying. He is “managing” the message. Besides, some bureaucrats have already proven soft wax in the hands of the government. If they would dress up as fake new citizens for a fake TV show, there is no telling what they might do on command – especially in Stephen Harper’s Republic of Fear. The bureaucrats dutifully gathered the appropriate facts, with the numbers either fiddled or fabricated. The file had been F-35’ed.
It must be noted that the PMO got into the racket. I guess it just proves that a political party can only take so many $16 dollar glasses-of-orange-juice stories before the knees of the faithful begin to wobble. The King wanted a new story: all the old furniture would be used by other government offices and somehow all Kent’s spending would actually save public money. Not even the PMO could cover up the $141,000 that was pissed away on storage. When all that seemed a bit much to sell, Kent did what Jason Kenney, Peter MacKay and other ministers have done before him when their alibis fell apart – he claimed he didn’t have the foggiest idea about what was going on in his office. A shabby but familiar ploy – blame the subordinate.
Kent is certainly not the only member of the cabinet whose elevation by the prime minister has fostered notions of invulnerability. Is there a better example of brash entitlement than the sneer that walks like a man – the often spittle-flecked and usually acerbic Foreign Minister, John Baird?
A professional public service is what gives bone and muscle to the idea that we are ruled by institutions and not men – a notion now in abeyance in Canada. In places where democracy is not at bay, that is what keeps public policy from becoming the means by which a government rewards its cronies and punishes its opponents – blandishments and enticements for on-siders, lumps of coal and worse for the less auspiciously aligned.
Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohm applied to the federal government for a grant from Human Resources minister Diane Finley’s department. So did 355 other people who wanted to make their facilities more accessible to their community members. The officials responsible for administering the program by grading applicants against established criteria reduced that number to 25 – the ones who scored 82 out of 100 or higher. The Rabbi’s application was not remotely close, receiving a score of just 53 out of 100.
Then Versailles kicked in. Human Resources minister Diane Finley asked that the Rabbi’s application be re-assessed by an outside evaluator, even though that process was only supposed to apply to the top 25 proposals so that four winners could be chosen. The evaluation was undertaken using different criteria but it didn’t have the desired effect. The application from the Canadian Federation of Chabad Lubavitch went down, not up, getting 51 out of 100. After an intervention by Baird on behalf of his “dear friend”, Minister Finley decided to over-rule her departmental officials and approve an application knowing that it came “with a number of weaknesses.” And that’s how being the friend of a cabinet minister at Versailles can be worth a million dollars – and how one of the 82 or higher scores was cheated out of a fair selection process.
The opposite of being a friend of the regime gets the opposite result. The same John Baird who fixed things for his friend made that perfectly clear when he told the House of Commons the real reason that the National Round Table on the Environment (NRTEE) was abolished in that legislative force-feeding known as Bill C-38. The government didn’t agree with the advice it received from the NRTEE, rather like Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Party who found the proof for global warming dubious. Versailles didn’t like being warned that doing an ostrich on climate change was dangerous business despite the fact that extreme weather events in the U.S. caused $53 billion worth of damage in 2011 and even Alberta has a carbon tax, albeit a small one of $15 per tonne.
Canada, and for that matter, the Harper government, didn’t create the Versailles complex. Nor is it solely a partisan creation – all governments grow arrogant after extended stretches in office. As David Dingwall taught everyone, being entitled to your entitlements comes naturally to those who temporarily rest on the public’s shoulders regardless of party affiliation. It is so very easy to imagine one’s self or one’s friends always ruling the roost.
The Obama White House, for example, is larger and more expensive than the Bush White House – 454 staff members, not counting a separate staff of 22 for his wife. And the Harper PCO, the prime minister’s department, is bigger than Jean Chretien’s – more than a thousand for Harper as compared to 662 for the little guy from Shawinigan. And that doesn’t count the 100 or so people in the Harper PMO, 87 of whom earn their pay as message controllers. Fact mutilators is such a harsh phrase.
Although Stephen Harper didn’t invent the special hubris that flows from unbridled power, his old self has all but disappeared under its transformative hand. The guy who once pilloried his own leader in the Reform Party for taking $31,000 a year in a secret pay subsidy with the words, “The whole idea of non-accountable expenses is not acceptable”, doesn’t even tell reporters when the full cabinet meets. He silences scientists and bureaucrats. He muzzles his own MPs. He gives no details on the operational impact of the cuts from the 2012 budget on government services.
When the parliamentary budget officer asked for that information from all federal organizations, Kevin Page got responses from just four of 83 of them as of May 4th – an underwhelming response accounting for less than 1 percent of planned savings. And it’s not that this regime doesn’t have the hands to get the word out. The Harper government has nearly ten times more spin-doctors than it has MPs, whose sole job is to retail the world-according-to-Stephen on a daily basis. Some members of the indentured press call this discipline.
What happened to the man who, when confronted with the autocratic machinations of a doomed Liberal minority, said on a spring night in 2005, “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”
When a government loses that, all it has left is Versailles until a din is raised around the Bastille.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Michael Harris
First, she had an exact replica of her bed shipped anywhere in the world when she was traveling for state reasons longer than three days and two nights because she liked to sleep in her “own” bed.
Second, she insisted that every bedroom assigned to her be painted red, her favorite color.
Finally, the workmen who constructed her bed-away-from-home also had to re-hang all the mirrors in the First Lady’s room so that when she looked into them she saw more than the top of her head. Details courtesy of Lewis H. Lapham.
The Harper government has more than a touch of Queen Nancy. It has already morphed into Versailles on the Ottawa. The facts, and the rules, are being made up as this crowd goes along – the usual decline into middle age of a government headed for the exit.
Not to say that the Versailles reflex isn’t exceptionally handy when caught with your pants down. Not many of us can just order other people to swear that we’re fully dressed. Only the Sun King himself – and a few chosen courtiers, have that kind of pull. Loyal subjects like the King’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent.
The confabulations, prevarications and whoppers just keep coming. Consider the furniture switcheroo perpetrated by Environment Canada (EC), and then covered up with all the finesse of the Three Stooges going at each other with mallets. At first, the department pays $141,000 to store furniture from a government office building that was being renovated. Then it decides that it needs new furniture, so the stored furniture now becomes the auctioned off furniture – almost. Apparently, Kent thinks re-cycling is for people who do yard sales. Ministers buy new stuff and work the unwanted junk off on e-Bay – even when it is the “BMW of furniture.”
It gets better. When EC’s profligacy leaks out, Kent’s office instructs bureaucrats to say the story in the media is false. (Not for nothing has he been fawning at Master’s knee long enough for the hero worship in his eyes to be noticed.) I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Peter Kent is not lying. He is “managing” the message. Besides, some bureaucrats have already proven soft wax in the hands of the government. If they would dress up as fake new citizens for a fake TV show, there is no telling what they might do on command – especially in Stephen Harper’s Republic of Fear. The bureaucrats dutifully gathered the appropriate facts, with the numbers either fiddled or fabricated. The file had been F-35’ed.
It must be noted that the PMO got into the racket. I guess it just proves that a political party can only take so many $16 dollar glasses-of-orange-juice stories before the knees of the faithful begin to wobble. The King wanted a new story: all the old furniture would be used by other government offices and somehow all Kent’s spending would actually save public money. Not even the PMO could cover up the $141,000 that was pissed away on storage. When all that seemed a bit much to sell, Kent did what Jason Kenney, Peter MacKay and other ministers have done before him when their alibis fell apart – he claimed he didn’t have the foggiest idea about what was going on in his office. A shabby but familiar ploy – blame the subordinate.
Kent is certainly not the only member of the cabinet whose elevation by the prime minister has fostered notions of invulnerability. Is there a better example of brash entitlement than the sneer that walks like a man – the often spittle-flecked and usually acerbic Foreign Minister, John Baird?
A professional public service is what gives bone and muscle to the idea that we are ruled by institutions and not men – a notion now in abeyance in Canada. In places where democracy is not at bay, that is what keeps public policy from becoming the means by which a government rewards its cronies and punishes its opponents – blandishments and enticements for on-siders, lumps of coal and worse for the less auspiciously aligned.
Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohm applied to the federal government for a grant from Human Resources minister Diane Finley’s department. So did 355 other people who wanted to make their facilities more accessible to their community members. The officials responsible for administering the program by grading applicants against established criteria reduced that number to 25 – the ones who scored 82 out of 100 or higher. The Rabbi’s application was not remotely close, receiving a score of just 53 out of 100.
Then Versailles kicked in. Human Resources minister Diane Finley asked that the Rabbi’s application be re-assessed by an outside evaluator, even though that process was only supposed to apply to the top 25 proposals so that four winners could be chosen. The evaluation was undertaken using different criteria but it didn’t have the desired effect. The application from the Canadian Federation of Chabad Lubavitch went down, not up, getting 51 out of 100. After an intervention by Baird on behalf of his “dear friend”, Minister Finley decided to over-rule her departmental officials and approve an application knowing that it came “with a number of weaknesses.” And that’s how being the friend of a cabinet minister at Versailles can be worth a million dollars – and how one of the 82 or higher scores was cheated out of a fair selection process.
The opposite of being a friend of the regime gets the opposite result. The same John Baird who fixed things for his friend made that perfectly clear when he told the House of Commons the real reason that the National Round Table on the Environment (NRTEE) was abolished in that legislative force-feeding known as Bill C-38. The government didn’t agree with the advice it received from the NRTEE, rather like Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Party who found the proof for global warming dubious. Versailles didn’t like being warned that doing an ostrich on climate change was dangerous business despite the fact that extreme weather events in the U.S. caused $53 billion worth of damage in 2011 and even Alberta has a carbon tax, albeit a small one of $15 per tonne.
Canada, and for that matter, the Harper government, didn’t create the Versailles complex. Nor is it solely a partisan creation – all governments grow arrogant after extended stretches in office. As David Dingwall taught everyone, being entitled to your entitlements comes naturally to those who temporarily rest on the public’s shoulders regardless of party affiliation. It is so very easy to imagine one’s self or one’s friends always ruling the roost.
The Obama White House, for example, is larger and more expensive than the Bush White House – 454 staff members, not counting a separate staff of 22 for his wife. And the Harper PCO, the prime minister’s department, is bigger than Jean Chretien’s – more than a thousand for Harper as compared to 662 for the little guy from Shawinigan. And that doesn’t count the 100 or so people in the Harper PMO, 87 of whom earn their pay as message controllers. Fact mutilators is such a harsh phrase.
Although Stephen Harper didn’t invent the special hubris that flows from unbridled power, his old self has all but disappeared under its transformative hand. The guy who once pilloried his own leader in the Reform Party for taking $31,000 a year in a secret pay subsidy with the words, “The whole idea of non-accountable expenses is not acceptable”, doesn’t even tell reporters when the full cabinet meets. He silences scientists and bureaucrats. He muzzles his own MPs. He gives no details on the operational impact of the cuts from the 2012 budget on government services.
When the parliamentary budget officer asked for that information from all federal organizations, Kevin Page got responses from just four of 83 of them as of May 4th – an underwhelming response accounting for less than 1 percent of planned savings. And it’s not that this regime doesn’t have the hands to get the word out. The Harper government has nearly ten times more spin-doctors than it has MPs, whose sole job is to retail the world-according-to-Stephen on a daily basis. Some members of the indentured press call this discipline.
What happened to the man who, when confronted with the autocratic machinations of a doomed Liberal minority, said on a spring night in 2005, “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”
When a government loses that, all it has left is Versailles until a din is raised around the Bastille.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Michael Harris
No comments:
Post a Comment