So this is governmental Transparency, eh?

            Lest we forget, Steven Harper was elected on promises of "responsible government, Law 'n Order, and transparency". And what do we get? An unenviable record of electoral dirty tricks that would even neo-conservative tactician Karl Rove would be proud of.

             During the last election, people in contested ridings received automated phone messages ("robocalls") purporting to originate with Elections Canada. Victims were told that their voting stations had been changed and were directed to new (non-existant) locales. Impersonating officials of Elections Canada to prevent voters from exercising their right is, of course, illegal.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/least+ridings+affected+robocalls+opposition/6212336/story.html 

            We suspect that neocons stoop to the level of negative ad bashing because they have nothing to put on the table: no program, no ideas, no vision. Just maintaining the dying, suicidal status quo on life support for a few more years at which time the boomers will all be dead in our graves. A sad commentary on a generation - who were given so much! - and our times..

             To conceal the intellectual vacuity of their positions on pressing issues like climate change, alternative energy, environment, rising disparity in income.. reactionaries turn - instinctively it seems - to the ad hominen / personal attack, to the victimization of scapegoats or to delusional national projects (historically, imperial wars were often used to this end). 

            Given that no less than 34 counties and some 79 individuals have come forward to date with complaints, one suspects that this issue is not going to go away very soon. We may be dealing with a breaking Watergate type scandal.
 

 internal blog link: 14 dec, 2011, Dirty Tricks, the New World Order
  
http://transparencycanada.blogspot.com/2011/12/dirty-tricks-new-world-order.html

From the "Incredible but True!" file: Shameful!

             Vic Toews, federal public safety minister apparently feels that the private sector profits trump the welfare, the health or the safety of citizens:

At a time when distressed flood victims in Quebec’s Richelieu Valley were urging the federal government for more troops to help deal with the crisis, Ottawa refused to send in additional soldiers, saying it would put them “in competition with the private sector.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/ottawa-initially-refuses-request-for-more-troops-to-aid-quebec-flood-victims/article2033562/

             It appears that the bottom line - despite patriotric machismo - is, well, the bottom line.. What a travesty of the word "citizen" we have here! In a State shrunk to the point it "could be drowned in a bathtub", the citizen is finally reduced to the status of a mere "client", a "consumer" of State services. A purely mercantile relation. At the limit, the poor "citizen" (client), who does not have the wherewithall to purchase services, does without. Witness the progressive - sureptitious - privitization of the health services.. death by a thousand cuts.. Yet another example of the mercantile psychology behind neoconservative ideology at work, transparently, in the open.. "From the mouths of babes".. Toews you are an innocent..

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist