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Layman's guide to Liberal theft (pg. 3)
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
obviously the details need to come out...and there should be consequences...but what I'd *really* like to see come of this is the development of a system of safeguards and checks so that the current administration, and those that will follow, can't so easily do it again. |
that sounds fantastic... but it won't happen under the Lieberals. It's a two step process: 1) get rid of them, AND 2) push the new government hard for change (i.e. don't rest on our laurels). |
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| amb_ |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
that sounds fantastic... but it won't happen under the Lieberals. It's a two step process: 1) get rid of them, AND 2) push the new government hard for change (i.e. don't rest on our laurels). |
| quote: | Originally posted by amb_
Give the reigns of the country to any other political party and they have exactly the same amount of freedom to conduct unsavoury activities as their predecessors. |
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| amb_ |
Oh lordy. The comedy never ends...
"Liberal opponents proclaimed the sponsorship scam the worst-ever scandal in Canadian history and immediately hinted it could topple the government... uhhhh... this spring."
I have a bruised kidney, but I can't stop laughing... |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
see ya! ;)
I actually laughed out loud when I read an article this week where Harper and the Conservative Alliance said that they won't bring down the gov't "for now". While they in fact could bring down the gov't, I suspect that the real reasons they dare not are:
1. the very real, very legitimate fear on their part that the Liberals would still win an election if it was called right now...in fact they'd probably have a larger margin of victory than they did last time.
2. the public backlash that would result against the Cons. for bringing down the gov't. They'd be perceived, no matter how they spin it IMHO, in a negative light for doing so.
Harper will never be PM...you can quote me on that. He's done nothing to improve his party's chances in the next election, whether now or years from now. Quebec will still never support that party, despite the time and effort they've put in there. Martin is front and centre, enjoying popularity.
Rightly or wrongly, most Canadians just don't care THAT much about the scandal. I suppose there's some sort of acceptance that every administation is "corrupt" to some extent and behaves in a somewhat similar manner. The Liberals got caught. To suggest that they are any more "evil" or underhanded is to be incredibly naive... |
So are u actually defending these scumbags or the idiots who elect them? Either way it is inexcusable. |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by loca
We are not living in a third world country! |
With the massive theft being witnessed, the embezzlement, the mafia involvement and the gag order on the media you could have fooled me!
The only thing that will make our third worldliness compelte is if we all just throw up our hands like Mark did and vote them anyways. Thats how these countries deteriorate to begin with. But we will find out next election. This is why i say that if Canada is dumb enough to elect them yet again we deserve the ominous fate that awaits us. |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by b4k-oz
OMG...it's like you read my mind :eyes:
Your starting to freak me out dood :nervous:
Seriously I'm 100% sure that if the tables were turned jayx1 would be saying absolutely nothing about it on the TA board.
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If the conservatives were pulling this crap id be 100% against them as well and just as vocal. ANY government commiting criminal acts and then covering it up through lies, misuse of power and media gags is absolutely inexcusable no matter what party they belong to.
This is not partisian. The only reason I am partisian is because right now the conservatives are the only real choice. Perhaps one day an even better party will come along with whom i agree with and i will support them instead. Or maybe one day the Liberals will actually start acting like a trustworthy party and i will be able to vote for them too, but at this rate its never going to happen. |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by amb_
Jay and Shadow are wrong. We don't need a new government, we need a new way to govern. Give the reigns of the country to any other political party and they have exactly the same amount of freedom to conduct unsavoury activities as their predecessors. To err is to be human... It matters not how honest a politician or their administration is, to err is human.
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You are right and thats exactly what the Reform party set out to do. Unfortunately with the new conservatives they had to throw out most elements of government reform from their platform because most canadians found it to be "too radical".
But id love to see proportional representation and a republic presidency instead of a parliamentary system. |
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| Jayx1 |
Point blank... if Canadians are ignorant and stupid enough to elect a party involved in criminal activity then i will be moving my money to overseas banks in a different currency because i dont trust that this country will be prosperous for too much longer.
A despot dictator's #1 secret weapon is public ignorance. Without it they cant rule. |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Colum...25/1011573.html
Believe it or not
Truth so easy to find in AdScam
By Ezra Levant
I believe Paul Martin. I believed him Thursday night when he said he wants to wait until Judge John Gomery's inquiry into AdScam is over before calling an election. I believed him last year, too, when he said he didn't want to wait until Gomery's inquiry was over before calling an election.
I believe Martin when he says he deeply respects Gomery. I believe he showed his respect when he led the Liberal caucus in a standing ovation for Jean Chretien's display of open contempt for Gomery. I believe Martin wants no stone left unturned. I believed that when he ordered Liberal MPs to shut down the Public Accounts Committee's investigations last year, before the last election. I believe if the Liberals get a majority government again, they wouldn't shut down the committee again, or interfere with Gomery, as they have with other inquiries.
I believe Martin when he says he's glad that Sheila Fraser, the auditor general, issued her report. I believe Liberal MPs and spin doctors were acting without Martin's approval when they personally attacked Fraser.
I believe Martin when he says he was happy to fire Alfonso Gagliano. I don't think it's odd that last summer he recorded a video birthday greeting for Gagliano, saying "I wish I could be there Alfonso. You may be a terrible golfer, but you're a tremendous political leader. Congratulations." I believed Martin when he said the Liberal party's books had been audited, and no AdScam monies were found there. And now that it has been shown the Liberal books were not audited, but were subject only to a limited review of a handful of official bank accounts, I believe that is all that is necessary, even to catch envelopes full of hundred dollar bills passed out at restaurants.
I believed Martin when he said he'd freeze any suspect Liberal party money in a trust account. And, like Martin, I believe it's no longer necessary.
I believe Martin when he said under oath that he never had lunch with Claude Boulay, a Quebec Liberal ad man and recipient of AdScam dollars, and that they were, at most, casual acquaintances. I believe the long, personal, hand-signed letters Martin sent to Boulay and his wife were not the signs of friendship, and the frequent personal time they spent together was over brunch, or dinner, not "lunch", so Martin did not perjure himself. I believe that had no bearing on Martin's Finance Department giving Boulay's firm a bigger ad contract. I believe Martin knew nothing about this widespread corruption. I believe that even though he was the senior Quebec minister, whose ministry approved the sponsorship budget, whose leadership campaign controlled most of the local riding associations. I believe when Liberal insiders, like Warren Kinsella and Akaash Maharaj, sent him memos about such practices in the 1990s and early 2000s, that Martin simply didn't read them.
I believe Benoit Corbeil, the executive-director of the Liberal party in Quebec, was lying when he said the Liberals rewarded lawyers who campaigned for them in 2000 by making them judges. I believe it is a coincidence Michel Bastarache of the Supreme Court was the co-chair of a "Yes" committee in the Charlottetown Accord referendum campaign. I believe Anne McLellan, the former justice minister, would never do such a thing. I believe it is a coincidence her riding received $63 million, more than any other Alberta riding, from the Transitional Jobs Fund, the scandal before AdScam.
And I believe this is all a media conspiracy, led by Peter Mansbridge, to get Stephen Harper elected.
(With apologies to the late Michael Kelly.) |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/o...print&position=
Woe Canada
By DAVID FRUM
"I LOVE Canada: It's so clean!" Visiting Americans may be about to lose their favorite cliché about their chilly neighbor. Over the past few weeks, a judicial inquiry in Montreal has heard charges that Canada's governing Liberal Party was running a system of extortion, embezzlement, kickbacks and graft as dirty as anything Americans might expect to find in your run-of-the-mill banana republic.
Just last week, for example, Canadians learned that one of the closest friends of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was paid more than $5 million for work that was never done and on the authority of invoices that were forged or faked. It is charged that this same friend then arranged for up to $1 million to be kicked back in campaign contributions to Mr. Chrétien's Liberal party.
Corruption charges have dogged the Chrétien Liberals for years. Mr. Chrétien left office in 2003 under suspicion that he had pressured a government-owned bank to lend money to businesses in which he held an interest. But until recently, nobody was able to prove anything worse than carelessness and waste. Now, though, the improper flood of money from the public treasury is being connected to a reciprocal flow of money to the Liberal Party and favored insiders, including Mr. Chrétien's brother.
And because Mr. Chrétien's successor, Paul Martin, failed to win a parliamentary majority in last year's federal election, Mr. Chrétien's old survival strategy of denial and delay no longer works. Together, the opposition Conservative and Bloc Québécois parties could force an election call at any time. Opinion polls suggest that if an election were held now, the Liberals would lose decisively.
The discrediting and defeat of Canada's Liberal government would constitute a grand event in Canadian history: after all, the Liberals have ruled Canada almost without challenge for the past 12 years and for almost 80 of the past 109 years. But the kickback scandal could reverberate outside Canada's borders too.
Many Americans see Canada as a kind of utopian alternative to the United States: a North American democracy with socialized medicine, same-sex marriage, empty prisons, strict gun laws and no troops in Iraq.
What they don't see is how precarious political support for this alternative utopia has become among Canadian voters in recent years. From World War II until the 1980's, Liberal power rested on two political facts: its dominance in French-speaking Quebec and its popularity in the immigrant communities of urban Ontario.
Over the past two decades, however, the Liberals' Quebec-plus-the-cities strategy has worked less and less well.
As French-speaking Quebecers have become more self-confidently nationalistic, they have turned their backs on the intensifying centralism and paternalism of the Liberals. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau rewrote the Canadian Constitution in the early 80's over the objections of the Quebec government of the day. In none of the six federal elections since have the Liberals won even half of Quebec's seats in Parliament.
Luckily for the Liberals, the Conservative Party split into warring factions in 1993. Consequently, the Liberals were able to return to power that year even though they won only 37 percent of the vote.
Almost everything that Jean Chrétien did as prime minister over the next decade can be understood as an effort to reverse his party's long-term problems. He edged to the right on economic issues in the hope of appealing to middle-income voters alienated by Mr. Trudeau's economic mismanagement. He veered leftward on social issues in the hope of finding a new constituency among wealthier Ontarians and Quebecers. After 9/11, he struck anti-American and anti-Israel attitudes that he hoped would resonate in isolationist Quebec and among certain immigrant communities.
And it was presumably for these same reasons that Mr. Chrétien set in motion his kickback scheme. As Liberal strength in Quebec has decayed, the Liberals have found it more and more difficult to hold together an effective political organization in the province. How do you sustain a political party without principles or vision? Sometimes you do it with graft.
So in 1995 a multimillion-dollar emergency national unity fund was established. The fund was justified as a way to win Quebecers away from separatism by sponsoring sporting events and cultural projects across the province. The fund failed in its ostensible purpose. But what the scheme did do was create a huge unmonitored slush fund from which key political figures in the province could be rewarded. A large portion of those rewards, the judicial inquiry in Montreal is being told, were then kicked back as campaign contributions to the Liberal Party and as payments to Liberal insiders.
Some Liberals defend the scheme as a noble plan gone wrong, an attempt to beat back separatism that was unfortunately corrupted by a few bad apples. But when so many apples go bad, you have to suspect that the barrel is rotten.
Unlike their supposed analogues, the Democrats in the United States or Great Britain's Labor Party, Canada's Liberals are not a party built around certain policies and principles. They are instead what political scientists call a brokerage party, similar to the old Italian Christian Democrats or India's Congress Party: a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government.
As countries modernize, they tend to leave brokerage parties behind. Very belatedly, that moment of maturity may now be arriving in Canada. Americans may lose their illusions about my native country; Canadians will gain true multiparty democracy and accountability in government. It's an exchange that is long past due.
David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a columnist for The National Post, a Canadian newspaper.
Italy was able to clean up its major parties in the mani pulite campaign: the Christian Democrats were decimated, reformed, and refounded. Why can't we do the same with the Lieberals? |
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| dEsidEL |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
If the Liberals get re-elected after all of this i'm seriously considering moving because i will never take this country seriously ever again. |
i heard Argentina isn't too bad these days !
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| Dj Smitty20 |
The real quesiton here is...do you want a government that mismanaged a few hundred million dollars in an effort to keep the country together....OR...do you want an administration with a PM that will have his head so far up Georg Dubbya's that we won't be able to see his feet?
Or you can waste your time and vote for the joke that is the NDP Party. I am struggling with these very issues right now. Harper will not get my vote. Any reasonable Ontarian or Quebecer will follow that example. |
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