(Prints off to about 12 pages)(modified at 17:00 hours) (This June 16 posting takes about 30 minutes to read)
I asked a rhetorical question in recent blogs that I have been asking publicly since 2006: “When will the abuse of privilege and power end? My rhetorical answer was and remains: “When we stop it.”
The image of Canadian Parliamentary Page Brigitte DePape holding up her “Stop Harper” sign could become an iconic symbol. But, as I say in previous emails/ blogs, the real problem is the incipient rot that spreads across all political spheres. Unfortunately, the iconic reason why DePape and others should remember the math from 1948 comes from my small Canadian town.
What we seem to have forgotten is that the legal promise made by 1948 was that the elected position should never become one that lacked accountability. After all, the lesson of Hitler, a man who first gained power via “a vote”, had set a clear example of what happens when our rulers become rulers to their own. Our original laws were never intended to allow politicians to design new laws for themselves, to the detriment of the citizens. That came from a lesson in our history that we seem to have forgotten.
On the weekend past, helicopters flew in and out of Nipigon. Once a forestry bureaucrat, I knew that the fluorescent numbers emblazoned on their sides mean that they were contracted to transport crews to fight forest fires. So, I went to the internet. I plugged in my home town’s name and began to look for reports on forest fires that might be near Nipigon. That search led me to a disturbing discovery.
Local media used the new standard of a standardized-in-same-words report to announce, on May 12, 2011, that small town Nipigon had been fined $10,000. The town had failed to maintain a safe drinking water system in 2008. The report said that the town is now only “about 1,500” people in size. When its wood-related mills were running full-bore before 2000, the town was supposedly nearer 2,500.
Ironically, I was just finishing the last year of my term in municipal office when the reason for this “safe water” legislation was introduced. On May 21, 2000, all hell had broken out in Walkerton, Ontario. Seven people died of E. coli contamination. Surface water had entered that town’s supply. Another “1268”, according to a CBC report on the subsequent 2002 inquiry, suffered illness. This left some people physically afflicted in some way for the rest of their lives. The resulting 2002 “public inquiry” found drunken town supervisors to be the main culprits.
However, the inquiry’s lead man, with his own political implications, also put a large quantity of blame onto the provincial government. After all, as a town councillor from 1997 to 2000, I was a witness to the strains put on small town Ontario as provincial Conservative Mike Harris downloaded things that were once a provincial responsibility onto our towns.
Indeed, in one of my first official functions as a town councillor, I had sternly told Nipigon “volunteer” fire fighters in 1997 to get the booze out of the town’s fire hall. If they did not, I warned that I would come after them with charges of having liquor in an unlicensed, publicly owned property. Booze, after all, is a good Canadian icon. Not knowing Walkerton, I dared to say in 1997 that the image of good, hard-drinking, fire-fighters watching hockey was neither responsible nor legal when they were “on duty”, even “at meetings”.
We seem to have forgotten that the hard-drinking supervisors of Walkerton faced criminal investigations. Two brothers ended up with Criminal convictions of one year in jail for one and nine months of house arrest for the other. Harris and his gang, including Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement, got off scott free, despite the deep recriminations from the inquiry’s commissioner. After all, had there been sufficient Ontario government environmental branch staffing and had their work been supported, a drunken town supervisor would not have become the main cog in this wheel of tragedy, was the report’s parallel theme.
It would serve all citizens well to remember that our courts and policing agencies of the day were full of people implicated with a history of their back door donations to the Conservatives and Liberals of that day. And too many days hence.
Therefore, I have a harsh question for the rest of “democracy”, as well as the citizens of Nipigon, as I use this 2011 case in Nipigon as an example. Why should it be that taxpayers always foot the bill when either staff or politicians jeopardize our safety or personal rights out of sheer incompetence or deliberate manipulation of a critical situation like this? Worse, why is it that our media fails their function in any democracy, again and again, in exposing these things?
The situation that played out in Nipigon in 2008 was abominable manipulation. The town’s citizens may now do the simple math. They might grumble about why they should foot an additional piddling $6.67 on their tax bills or the reorganization of their town taxes to take $10,000 out of a town program to pay this fine. Indeed, on June 16, as I started this blog/email, the cashier and the elderly male bagging my groceries, exchanged grandiose enthusiasm. The old man said that he had heard news that the town had received “$12.1 million” for town revitalization. Both citizens said that they hoped that the town would spend it wisely. They were fed up with the deteriorating streets of the town.
But, my question becomes why are there no pickets on Nipigon’s streets demanding the removal of esteemed councillors, like Richard Harvey, the “Reeve” and a 2011 local candidate for the federal Conservatives; James Foulds, a good old union, New Democratic Party boy; and Levina Collins, a councillor with public implications of Conservative affiliations? Why should my town be forced to suffer the illegalities of a “majority of 3” (town council is composed of 5 elected officials) who have bought into the illegal precept that partisans should rule us all and we should all just suffer the consequences. Even when illegal incompetence has risked the lives or rights of citizens or just one citizen.
The part of the equation that should be concerning all citizens is this.
In 2008, the small town of Nipigon was eagerly awaiting federal and provincial tax dollars. The town fathers wanted to use taxed millions to beautify their town. The town was required to commit to put hundreds of thousands into the project before they would receive the federal and provincial redirected taxes. “Reeve” Harvey had renamed himself “Mayor” by 2008 in the hopes of achieving greater esteem with higher political offices in Toronto and Ottawa. Foulds, the good NDPer had already publicly aligned himself for a 2007 provincial election, with the support of good unionized people.
Not knowing all of this carry-on about an illegally functioning water system, I did sit in town council meetings in December 2008. This was because I had received a document prepared by landscape architect Werner Schwar. He wanted to use landscape stone that he had seen at my marble quarry in 2001. Since that year, he had lusted to put this stone in this town’s beautification project. The numbers that I saw in 2008 said that near $150,000 of my stone was being specifically targeted for this project because of its unique qualities.
In December 2008, I wrote a letter to the Nipigon town council. I warned that they were taking this amount of money from federal and provincial tax coffers at the same time that I was being denied accessible and impartial justice. They were hiding from the abuse of privilege and power at provincial and federal levels of governance. I warned that, if they accepted one dime of provincial or federal tax while a citizen in their midst was denied free access to Canada’s courts to deal with my issues related to this stone (read the next three blogs, if you do not have the time to read the book), then they would be joining federal and provincial officials in abusing their positions.
I warned that they would be abusing taxes for the sake of appearances while the rights of citizens declined. I dared to call the Nipigon multi-million dollar pet project a false stone front that was hiding the real decline of the rights of citizens. I did not know that, by that very date, these same councillors had already started playing with citizens lives. I sat in that December 2008 meeting, not knowing a thing about what had happened to the town’s water supply.
In that room, I sat in front of a town “reporter”, a retired school teacher named Glena Clearwater. Glena had received copies of my 2008 warning letters to that town’s council via email. Despite inviting me into her home with my wife to play cards, she never once asked to sit down to get the details behind my concerns. She did report enthusiastically on the town’s fathers enthusiasm for gaining these taxes so that the sad front street in that town could be “beautified”. Oh she was so happy that the Reeve might sit in a new office!
Indeed, because Reeve Harvey had been so adept at bringing the town millions in taxed dollars, she was one of the first to pound his sign into her snow banks. Harvey was a Conservative candidate in the May 2, 2011 federal election. She, by that 2011 date, had snottily told a friend of mine, who had bought my book, that she would “never read anything written by Don MacAlpine”.
Such is the state of “journalism” in this sad state of democracy.
The premise of “democracy” is that the “journalist” has a role to expose even the mere potential for abuse of privilege and position. The duty of the journalist is not solely to the positives. They are to expose the possibility of dying through incompetence or jailing through the exclusion of justice. Instead, it seems that it is not until the disease is rampant or the jails are first filled and then the dissidents begin to be starved or to be executed that modern journalists wake up to any sense to their duty.
Clearwater stayed silent to my petitions that the abuse of our taxes end. This was because, as reported on August 6, 2009, about $9 million in taxes was poured into the town’s downtown “revitalization” project. That seems like it was a pretty good deal, was it not? After all, Nipigonites should laugh, should they not? The “good leadership” of Harvey and Foulds allowed the town’s fathers to avoid fixing a water treatment problem that, in the end, only cost the town’s citizens each $6.67 in a 2011 fine. By gar, the same citizens get $6,000 into their own pockets by 2009. (I could not find reports for what part of this number would be municipal taxes burning holes in their pockets twice.)
But, it is time to start to do some simple math.
By the late summer of 2009, the local media were applauding the appearance of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper at Nipigon’s waterfront. Indeed, Reeve Harvey was recorded in one report as virtually gushing about what a grand man Harper was. It should have been little surprise, therefore, by 2011 that there was much fanfare in Nipigon in 2009. By 2011, Harvey was running for the federal Conservatives.
What is deliberately manipulative and abusive use of position and power was this. None of these people, the media included, revealed that a water plant situation in Nipigon had jeopardized the health of town citizenry, for what reason?
The precedent for all of this simple math was set at Walkerton on the backs of 7 deceased citizens and 1268 who will especially remember that event for the rest of their lives. What price is put on the back of the citizen for their lives? Is a fine of $6.67 per citizen any consequence in making the citizen wake up to why they should be castigating the “journalism” of 2008 and chasing their “leaders” out of Nipigon’s council chambers?
Take the simple math back to the intent of our law: to place accountability on the accountable.
In 2008, the unwitting citizens of Nipigon did not hear of a situation which Walkerton had showed jeopardized their personal health and safety. The report of May 2011 said that the lack of proper water works was irresponsible. Who was irresponsible? The unwitting citizen? Or those persons paid taxes or assigned elected positions to perform their duties on behalf of all citizens in protection of all of the rights of all citizens? Even the right to life.
Are the residents of Nipigon a complacent bunch when it comes to what flows into the mouths of their children when they know what is happening? Not so. In April 1990, a major landslide on the Nipigon River, the source of the town’s drinking water, dumped trees, organic soils, clay and silt into the river. As a result, the town had to hastily erect an alternate pumping source for an already strained water treatment system. While the then Ministry of the Environment (MOE) and the town insisted that the new source was “safe”, the fury that built in the press forced quicker resolution to the drinking water problems in that spring.
At the time, government officials were only testing for bacteria and other immediate disease causing agents from this “alternate source”. As a government bureaucrat, I dared to publicly write letters to the editor, with a multitude of others. We challenged the town’s fathers of that day.
“The Lagoon”, a man-made bay on the river, is at the bottom of a steep clay hill on which much of the main town sits. It has a notorious history. An old version of Canadian Tire had sat on its slopes. Older residents told of batteries, tires and other known pollutants, by 1990, being dumped into that lagoon “in the good old days”. The town council was rapidly warned to stop saying that the water from this source was “safe” when old toxins were not being tested for. The public furor hastened the resolution to the concerns about water sources. Journalists played a role in making the town’s council accountable.
Glena, thank god, was only a piddling teacher puddling with school kids in 1990. She was notorious for taking the kids to ponds to educate them on “nature”. By 2008, her only journalistic concerns were dogs crapping on streets, cars parking in no-stopping areas and the positively big wad of taxes that the town would receive if the town council patted the relevant delicate parts of bigger politicians.
A retired teacher acts as a “journalist”. She is a walking bud of my “ex”. I sit in her house in 2010. I am subjected to watching her “news images” of her pretty boy Reeve. After all, by 2009, Reeve Harvey has palmed the hand of Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, gleaned $9 million in taxes and announced Nipigon as the supposed headquarters of a National Marine Conservation Area. By 2011, despite being offered a book to read to educate herself to why this man is not such a golden boy, she has slammed this politician’s sign into her “free speech”-indicted journalistic pile of snow.
Fitting metaphor, that picture. Clearwater slams a sign into an early April pile of snow. The sign slowly slides downward as the lily white snow disappears to reveal the filth hidden below. Dog crap and other stuff that flows into Nipigon’s rivers. Glena has sat meekly in town council meetings where we now know that, two decades after the vocalism of the 1990’s, an event is hidden from town’s folks.
There is no debate made as to what would have been the worth of the life of one Nipigon citizen had the breach of duty, to maintain a clean water supply, led to the consequences of Walkerton. There is, worse, in 2011, no debate (yet) as to direct culpability and accountability for actions that Walkerton showed could threaten the very lives of town residents.
Why? Glena may be part of the problem but she is not “the” problem. The rot of the role of journalism has rotted all of the way up the esteemed pile of journalistic snobbery. But, the simple math becomes this when a small town becomes an example of what happens when politicians, in concert with partisan lawyers, pass new laws that remove their accountability.
Did a town employee deliberately hide the town’s problem of 2008? This is unlikely. This is because, starting in 2000, because of Walkerton, I observed the process begin for employees of the town who worked on water works. Extensive training had to be undertaken. Only certified employees could oversee the treatment plant issues. The supposedly severe consequences of dereliction of duty were beaten into their heads. The risk of Walkerton ever happening again was to disappear under these circumstances.
I know many of these fine employees of this fair town. Most are conscientious, hard workers. I doubt that one of them would deliberately hide such deliberate neglect.
I do know that they are part of a “union culture” where they are told to keep their mouths shut. This is told them by big unions from whence came good socialist Foulds. These union officials, as my book makes a record of from my own experiences, say that the government employee’s only duty is to tell their supervisors of problems that they have. These good union people say this even when malicious neglect, like the one the town was fined for, jeopardizes the health and rights of citizens. This “union” culture is borne from the politics of unions where the individual subverts their rights to stand up against wrong for the sake of the “new democracy”.
In a town named Nipigon, did a town employee tell the town that what they were doing was illegal and threatening the health of the town’s citizens? This is highly likely. The news reports of May 2011, unlike the 2000 reports for Walkerton, did not identify a malevolent or incompetent employee. No one was said to have hid the maintenance problem from anyone.
Unfortunately, neither do the news reports of 2008 report Glena Clearwater, or some other ardent journalist, being approached anonymously or openly to see an immediate end to this dereliction of duty in the maintenance of the town’s water supply. Instead, the record is that Glena focussed her reporting efforts in the positives being advanced by the town’s fathers as they played with taxes so that they could gain grand frontage over the false front that the town looked pretty while its water plant failed the safety of citizens.
How much would it have cost to have this problem rapidly resolved instead of focussing so much effort in the propaganda of slapping a Prime Minister’s hands while the citizens washed in and drank water that did not meet the law, because of Walkerton? No matter how you cut it, when the journalist and the town employee suppress issues of citizens’ rights for the sake of appearances, any news becomes blatant propaganda.
So, move on up the chain of command. The town employees in such cases are overseen by a professional engineer. If the town employee or employees notified such a man of the problem, and it seems that they must have, then this “professional” would have more than just the onerous duty of his “professional” position. He, in Nipigon, would have been obliged in 2008 to identify the problem to his overseers. In the town structure of Nipigon, this would have ultimately been the town’s council.
This seems to have been the case. The May 2011 media reports make no mention of this town engineer being cited for the incompetent supervision revealed in Walkerton by 2002. There are also reports made of every “Public Works” meeting. Glena Clearwater and her esteemed town paper would have access to such meetings and reports.
How much would it have cost to have this problem rapidly resolved instead of focussing so much effort in the propaganda of slapping a Prime Minister’s hands by 2009 while the citizens in 2008 washed in and drank water that did not meet the law, because of Walkerton? Who decided that this risk was worth taking?
It is unlikely that a bumbling, bureaucratic town engineer would take the risk. But, neither would this “professional” take the high road of going public to expose that someone else cared little about human health in 2008. This is because, if you read my book, partisan lawyers were telling other “professionals” in the year that our constitution arrived, 1982, to shut up. If they saw a problem, they were to simply make a record of their official concerns so that their hands were clean, even if the citizen should die.
The record is that “reporter” Glena focussed her reporting efforts in the positives being advanced by the town’s fathers as they played with taxes so that they could gain grand frontage over the false front that the town looked pretty while its water plant failed the safety of citizens.
By May 2011, “the Township” entered a “guilty plea” to their neglect in 2008. Our grand media runs away saying that the law has worked. But it has not.
There is no grand investigation or exposure to what elected officials decided they would trade off so that they would not need to spend tax dollars on immediately making water safe for Nipigon residents in 2008. After all, in 2008, they were vying for bigger taxed dollars to make them famous in the eyes of the citizenry. Evidently this was even worth the risk of another Walkerton raising its ugly head in a small town called Nipigon. The record is that the reporters of 2008, including Glena, focussed their reporting efforts in the positives being advanced by the town’s fathers as they played with taxes so that they could gain grand frontage over the false front that the town looked pretty while its water plant failed the safety of citizens.
The illegal equation becomes that elected town fathers can make the value of one life of their citizens worth the risk of their elevated, pompous, collective stature. It is then the citizen who must pay for this deliberate breach of responsibility, instead of the maleficent, self-centred individuals on a town council? No. The simple equation becomes this.
In December 2008, I sat in a town council meeting where current, 2010 elevated town councillor named Levina Collins attended. Eventually implicated in my documentation as a Conservative tainted “politician” (via Elections Ontario data), Ms. Collins was merely an Economic development pusher in that meeting. She was clamouring for the taxed dollars from a once-elected Liberal lawyer named Joe Comuzzi.
So, citizens of my nation, start to follow the simple math very carefully.
Liberal Comuzzi, by June 26, 2007, had been welcomed into the federal Conservative fold. After all, Comuzzi, the good Conservative-rogue-Liberal, had voted for a Conservative budget early in 2007. This was because the good Conservatives had promised his home town, Thunder Bay, a big wad of taxed money. So, when the Liberal faction booted Comuzzi out for violating the orders of “their leader”, Stephane Dion, he only sat temporarily as an “independent” (you will have to struggle through the book to understand why this was also an illegal abomination). Stephen Harper, whom Reeve Harvey then personally glad-handed in 2009 and then ran as an idolizing Canadian “for” in 2011, gladly took Comuzzi under his Conservative banner. So, by December 2008, Levina, the Conservative-implicated, along with Conservative-implicated Harvey, was loudly declaring that the town must be positive in all things that might gain the town taxed dollars for her pet project, her downtown revitalization plan. These, just conveniently, were taxed dollars now ultimately overseen by big federal lawyer Joe in 2008.
Do the simple math. This was all connected by the geometry of dots that led to how good partisans can align themselves to empower themselves while our rights rapidly decline. This happens with the help of grand propaganda. After all, and yes, I take you back to my “... The record is that “reporter” Glena focussed her reporting efforts in the positives being advanced by the town’s fathers as they played with taxes so that they could gain grand frontage over the false front that the town looked pretty while its water plant failed the safety of citizens. ...”.
So, do this simple math of connecting the dots that makes our “democracy” no better than what transpired in Nazi Germany before 1939.
Stephen Harper was able to gladly and warmly welcome Liberal lawyer Joe Comuzzi’s Parliamentary vote to empower his partisans more in 2008, why? Go back to elected Liberal lawyer named Jean Chretien. Already castigated for the partisan appointments into Canada’s courts, Chretien took great pride in what powers he had gained many years ago.
An elected Parliamentarian, defined as being in the Conservative fold of the day, was unhappy with unholy acts in the Conservative corral of sheep in Ottawa. Scott Brison walked across our Parliamentary folds. He did so without a vote by the citizens. He did so to enhance the Liberal trough of pigs already gobbling taxes because they loved Chretien so.
There was much outcry in the press and the public about how wrong this was. Having been made sweaty by the shouts from many, Chretien and his gang acted like Hitler did. Seeing his power threatened, a new law was simply passed. An “Ethics Commissioner” became a new court in Canada to protect Chretien and his Cretan Brison from Criminal code charges of exercising influence and of blatant breaches of trust.
This new law being passed, elected Liberal lawyer named Paul Martin swore loyalty to the new law as he blatantly used our taxes to entice Belinda out of bed. Remember Belinda Stronach? She was the feisty virginal foal in the Conservative fold of that day. She was reportedly bedding horse-mouthed Peter MacKay, another good elected lawyer, but this time in the Conservative stable. Stronach was lured out of the Conservative stall with her elevation to a ministerial position. Good thing for Martin that the oats for this luring of this partisan ass did not come out of his rich pockets. No, the taxed dollars paid for Martin to continue this parody. This was really not a comedy when we remember what happened in Nazi Germany before 1936.
The Conservatives and others went screaming to an “Ethics Commissioner”. This man “of ethics” pasted the big “Okay!” into our Parliamentary stop signs by circling the horses behind the barn away from the public jury of twelve that would have hung Martin and Stronach and all of the clowns involved in this. After all, the Criminal code forbidden abuse of privilege and position was becoming endless. It had just accelerated. Influencing. Breach of trust. Elected lawyers, of the partisan kind, brayed that this new law now made them the law.
The Conservatives dared bray, only for a short time, that this judgement had come from a once-lawyer. The man had implications of favouring the Liberal partisans before being promoted to be our nations “commissioner of ethics”. The ethics of Nazi Germany were already established in our democratic institutions at the highest of places.
So, before we do the final equation that leads us back to Nipigon in 2011, think carefully on this. Stephen Harper had gained power in 2006. Before the elected even got into the Parliamentary halls in the first month of that year, he had called David Emerson. Emerson was a rich business man elected as a Liberal. He was from Vancouver. Like Stronach, Emerson was elevated to a ministerial position by our taxes. He willingly ran into the funny farm fold of Conservatives. No vote was held “for the people by the people” so that the people had any say in this change of partisan loyalties.
After all, asses will be asses if horses they cannot be.
Predictably, the Liberals yelled loudly to the Ethics Commissioner. Harper snottily said that he would not sit in that commissioner’s office. After all, the man was Liberal implicated and Liberally appointed. But, Harper celebrated when this supposed new court in our nation ruled in Harper’s favour. Not even the journalists loudly asked why a “man of ethics” would have any credibility in any of this. After all, if a good Liberal fails to criminalize what a bad Liberal named Martin had done, how could he convict a bad Conservative named Harper, who had simply done the same thing?
Worse, the likes of Jack Layton and Elizabeth May (yes, Ms. May, I even broached this issue and directed your “party” to its implications on occasion until I gave up after getting no response) would stay silent to this criminal conduct. This breach of trust. This use of influence from positions of trust. They would stay silent because it becomes obvious, after Quebec votes in 2011 for “the man” Layton, not for the non-resident Brosseau who was supposed to speak for them via their vote.
Power is achieved by the propaganda that one person speaking for all of us is what is best for this “democratic” nation.
Shades of Nazi Germany remain in Canada into 2011. The partisans align themselves in eager cooperation so that they can promote their propaganda that what they would do to us is best for us.
So, the simple math for a town named Nipigon becomes relevant. It explains why a New Democrat Party-aligned James Foulds was as eager. This pet project of Levina’s had been a major position in his campaigning platforms. This town revitalization project gained his loud support in his campaign for municipal council in 2006. It also gained his support when he entered Ontario’s 2007 provincial campaign as a New Democratic Party candidate.
Thus, in December 2008, the record is that “journalist” Glena focussed her reporting efforts in the positives being advanced by the town’s fathers as they played with taxes so that they could gain themselves grand frontage over the false front that the town looked pretty while its water plant failed the safety of citizens. In December 2008, my warnings about how all of this impacted on my own rights as a citizen, working to survive in a world of dishonest and corrupted business, governance and justice institutions, went behind closed doors.
The doors were closed. The debate, even about a situation risking the immediate health of citizens, could be turned off. Why would the politician then not turn off a debate about the illegalities at higher levels of government? Especially if talking might jeopardize their pet project.
The simpler math comes down to this.
By 1948, Hitler had set an example that we knew must never be allowed again. No politician would ever gain power and not be accountable, daily.
International law was passed. It made the citizen’s rights paramount over the elected. Despite what the nation’s elected then did when it came to racism, religious and sexual intolerances and other discriminating natures of man unkind, by 1982, Canada had reaffirmed their supposed commitment to this concept. Their new constitution reiterated the principles of 1948. The Criminal Code created sections that forbade the elected from abuse of their position. This included the concept that they could be thrown into jail for any breach of trust.
Because of the example from Hitler, simply writing a new law was disallowed. Any law that reduced the citizen’s rights while the partisan or their friends gained became a breach of trust. Fining the citizens, while it was ultimately the elected who had jeopardized the lives of or removed the rights of even only one citizen? Under our original laws, a $10,000 fine should be paid by the town councillors and by anyone else who breached their duty and hid the 2008 situation in Nipigon. Or they should be thrown into jail.
But, DePape and the rest of Canadian citizenry might want to do more math.
By December 2008, the world was into economic turmoil. Dishonesty in business was the main culprit. I sat in a town council venue in 2008 where I once sat as an elected official. Indeed, in 1990, a relative of one of the councillors whom I eventually served with, Greg Harper, asked me why we would expect anyone to want to be in elected office. The man implied that my 1990 public challenge to elected officials had hurt his poor relative’s political sensitivities. I suggested, even then, that if the politicians could not stand the heat then they should tuck up their balls and go play with them elsewhere. Elected positions were not for self adulation or self promotion.
By 1997, I took my own lumps from dealing with public office because I know that this is the base premise of democracy. It is mainly through the public venue of free speech that we can modify the behaviour of our elected. However, by December 2008, (read the previous emails or blogs below) I knew that our laws were intended to be the ultimate protectorate of the rights of all citizens. I also knew by 2008 that this concept had been completely removed by partisans using the same tactics as Hitler. Align with other partisans. Change the law to protect the partisan. Promote the partisan into the courts and policing institutions to protect the new law of the partisan.
In December 2008, I sat in a room of the elected where the “journalist” sat and hid the depth of this decay. You might have to read the book to understand the full lessons I had in hand by that date. Or you might want to simply do the math as to why Glena Clearwater is simply one small example of a big problem in the principle of free speech making our politicians accountable to the law. Daily.
By 2011, I am watching my town fill with people paid out of extracted taxes. I watch old employees of rich mills bagging groceries. I hear about elected professional foresters who work in day care centres. I hear of houses being sold in town to a false economy of rich cops and richer teachers or medical professionals. Citizens of my town and my nation do not do the simple math.
Read the book for the whole story or at least work your way through the simple math of the next three blogs at my book’s web page.
The town of Nipigon might generate work using $12.1 million in taxed dollars. It is more likely that much of that will go to administrative fees for big shots outside the town. Lawyers. Accountants. Consultants. Rich construction companies. Many are rich donors to the partisans who redirect our taxes back to these good partisan donors. Start doing the simple math.
In February 2011, I launched a first edition of my book. It makes record of the battle I had against partisans as I sought to protect a $36 million dollar opportunity gained from honest and hard work in business. Because I dared to demand honesty into our institutions of governance, starting in 2001, this book details what my blog summarizes happened to me. Intimidation and harassment guided by “legal professionals” with partisan connections. Arrest by cops with partisan connections. Shades of Nazi Germany entering my nation.
So, in February 2011, I made a symbolic trip to Ottawa. The subsequent copies of my book included the record of how men in blue blocked delivery of my book to our elected in that pretty ugly city of political denial. The simple math of the role of free speech in all of this becomes this.
By the time I arrived in Ottawa, I had stumbled across a CP (Canadian Press) article by a specific reporter said to be working from an “Ottawa bureau”. She wrote sternly and eloquently about the problems associated with partisan judges being appointed into our courts. I went to the CP site. I searched for her name. Most businesses tell us how to contact their employees, after all.
In the end, I sent a frustrated email to the web site’s only allowable address. I offered to give this specific reporter a free copy of my book. I was travelling 1600 km to Ottawa. Surely Ottawa-based she could meet me for breakfast. With the three politicos I had invited.
The result? A CP big shot, named Rob Russo, offered to accept a copy of my book, if I dropped it off at his Ottawa office. I would not get the contact information for that reporting journalist, Russo thereby assured me. I would not get to sit down with a journalist who had written critically about the critical condition of this nation’s justice system.
Aw, yes. Glena Clearwater may have become the small example of a small town situation that emulates a big problem in my nation. IF Glena had talked to me about my emails of 2008 to her, she just might have brokered a story that led my nation, and other nations, to understand how incipient rot in our courts has illegally rotted the accountability required, and protected by law, in our democracies. It now comes down to the simple math for all citizens to contemplate.
Read at least three of the next blogs below. When our elected abuse their positions, do we meekly bow to the rule by criminals? Do we allow the likes of Layton, Rae and Harper, and all others, who appoint their friends into strategic positions to protect them, to rule us? Or, as should happen in the simple math from a town in Nipigon, should our elected be forced out of their positions for their repetitive abuse of position and privilege gained, to then breach our trust?
Oh, I assure you, concerned citizens of our nation. We do have the instruments to throw the likes of Harper out of office for abusing our taxes in the promotion of people like Comuzzi and Harvey. The original laws were created because of the history before 1948. The simple math from that lesson from our history became this.
Our vote was never to become an instrument for politicians who thought that they should rule us without daily accountability or challenge. Because these people have created new laws, we are not obliged to accept that our only option is to fume for 4 years until “our vote” gives us the opportunity to turf these people out. No, we need to start to have the courage to boot the accountable and the criminally acting out of our Parliaments, town halls, courts and even policing stations.
If you read the blogs/emails from before, you will know why I dare to challenge. I do not really care if it bothers citizens in my small town. I posted brochures in their mail boxes in the same month that I launched my book. I purposely challenged their complacency to the growth in their town of the phenomenon that existed in Europe too few decades ago. It is, therefore, ironic that the simple math comes in the past week from events in this small town.
Simply because veterans from the war intended to end all of this are now passing on does not remove our obligations to recognize the role of history in guiding our daily democracies. The politician must never be allowed to make the citizen pay for the politician’s neglect. The citizen must never be made of lesser importance than the politician on any day of our years between our votes. Our vote should simply be an affirmation that we have chosen the best to lead us. It must never be an instrument for the politician to make themselves all powerful.
When this base rule of democracy, protected in our founding laws, is neglected and the partisan consolidates their powers by placing partisans, or simply complicit bureaucrats, into our institutions of justice and governance, then other citizens should think about this. While German “leaders”, including “judges”, were jailed or hung for abuse of power first gained via the vote, the citizens of Germany suffered the consequences of their neglect. Warned to stand up against injustice, they did not.
In time, other citizens had to violently oppose their collective complacence. But, when the credible rule of law returned, yes, even Jews eventually sued the citizenry of like nations for taking away their rights and property. Nevertheless, we should never forget that Germany gains ground in the realm of credible democracy because its children dare to ask their fathers and mothers, “Why did you do nothing?”
The lesson became that we, the citizens, carry some responsibility for stopping the abuse of privilege and power. Even DePape’s singular protest is irresponsible if it does not lead to clarity as to why our concerns are legitimate. But, it is the citizenry that stays silent that becomes irresponsible if this is not stopped before it becomes what lessons from our history show us we will have if we do not wake up.
It is ironic that 2008 is the year when the economy of America fell apart, and so did the world’s. This happened primarily because the citizenry no longer trusted the dishonesty in business and political leadership. This distrust continues with justifiable reason.
We need to rectify the problems in all parts of our democracies or we will be into dangerous and tenuous grounds. Untrustworthy governance leads to disillusionment. Disillusionment leads to dissent. Dissent not delivered credible change through credible structures leads to anarchy. We need to get the justifiable cynicism with our modern democratic structures dealt with. Now.
Will we do that or will we simply allow the simple math, that “$10,000 costs 1,500 citizens only $6.67 each!”, while forgetting the costly ramifications of allowing self-serving criminals to rule over us?
(My apologies... but these daily revelations have led me to set aside my revisions to my http://TakeBackDemocracy.ca web page. There, I will suggest the strategies we must take and use our Criminal Code to set an example to elected in our positions of governance and the appointed, especially in our institutions of justice. I invite you to visit that web page next week to see how this can be achieved. For now, I hope that you will read the first four blogs accessible via my http://JustBusinessTheBook.com site.)
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