Jean Carle is the Smoking Gun -- or the apple bumping the tree on its fall?
When the Gomery Commission got Jean Carle to admit that he had set up a phoney accounting system for hiding the sponsorship pay-offs the die was cast. Carle, who was appointed by Chretien as Vice President of Marketing for the federal Business Development Bank, used the bank to pull off the scam. When Judge Gomery likened that tactic to how drug smugglers do their money laundering, Carle admitted the judge was not wrong.His furious lawyer tried to suggest that Gomery's comparison was "inappropriate". What he really wanted to say was, "How could my client be so stupid as to agree with the judge's assessment!"
Next up in the witness box will be two practiced l**** / 'misspeakers', Chretien and Martin. Their testimony, since there will be big contradictions, should be very entertaining -- especially Chretien's, as he often told people that Jean Carle was like a son to him. Well, Chretien better hope that people don't remember that old saying: "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
Revisiting an old Government Scandal--Keep the Airborne Regiment, Disband the Liberals
After the case of the murder of a Somalian looter and the "mistreatment" of other looters, the Liberals began a commission to investigate the entire airborne regiment. Out of it came the army's harsh way of dealing with looters of military provisions. This treatment became velcroed to the single murder by one soldier. To top it up, the bleeding hearts on the commission and in government were shocked and appalled to discover that part of the airborne's training was an initiation that was also harsh. The video produced also showed a female soldier undergoing it. Now we supposedly had misogyny added to the mishmash of evidence. Of course, if women hadn't been given equal treatment to the men, that would have been 'sexism'. In short, the army could not win for losing. To make their case for disbanding the regiment, Collonnette, the Defense Minister, and his minions, resolutely refused to take testimony from lower rank officiers. The government couldn't spin their line of a regiment going to the dark side--veritable neo-Nazis--if the commission dragged on, so the Liberal government closed it down. That futile exercise cost the Canadian taxpayer $14 million in 1994 dollars. The millions more for the legal fees for the senior officiers' testimony and "the liaison team" from the DND was never revealed. The estimated total cost would be around $50 million in today's dollars.
The entire affair infuriated the military and ended up being attached to Kim Campbell, under whom the commission had been birthed. Still, it was the Liberals who pulled the plug on the regiment.
Basically, the tough warrior ethics of an elite regiment didn't jive with the Liberals' idea of tin soldiers holding up "Give peace a chance signs". Fortunately they had lots of time to live down their scandalous final decision. And you wonder why the military tends to vote against the Liberals, despite the last minute election attempts to buy their allegiance?
Clinton was profiled by Robert Sam Anson in Vanity Fair (June, 2004) and the picture wasn't very flattering. The article, "Bill and his shadow", shows that Clinton has never really adjusted to his lost position. He attends parties and has to be gently ushed out, long after the other guests have left. He is a monologist, (motormouth?) who has zero interest in what others think or feel. A classic case of, "Well, I've talked enough about myself; now why don't you talk about me?" Friends are driven crazy by his middle of the night phone calls that can go on for hours. The fact that the recipient might have to go to the office at eight is of no concern.
He also seems blind to his past errors as President. Despite being up-dated regularily about the Rwandan genocide, he still maintains that he was never informed. Also the four separate chances he had to get Osama Bin Laden, before Bin Laden made it to Afghanistan and infamy, are not acknowledged. "The Sudanese never intended to turn him over to us," is his spin on that. However, the former U.S. ambassador to Sudan claims that statement is false, and that to improve relations with the U.S., the Sudanese not only would have given up Bin Laden, but also given the list of African al-Queda members, the ones who later carried out the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Clinton also refused to give the order to kill Osama in the Afghan desert when the CIA had tracked him down. The ostensible reason was that Bin Laden was hosting a hunting party that contained United Emirate sheiks. Mustn't upset the oil barrel.
Nor, according to Anson's research, has Bill mended his wandering ways. He hobnobs with billionaires, who in turn hobnob with harems of pretty young things. At his worse, he actually pesters young women, even if they are with their boyfriends. His Secret Service detail then has to step in to avoid assault on a former President. In terms of non-sexual morality, Clinton doesn't come across much better. He has taken large sums of money from people who have very dubious financial pasts. Only after criticism about his taking an office in mid-town Manhattan that rented for $800,000 a year, did he move his show up to Haarlem. It was the same sense of entitlement we saw in his looting of the White House upon vacating it. Hillary was said to have been the mastermind behind the heist, but Bill never stopped her. Perhaps his lowest point in this regard came when he pardoned Marc Rich, a big-time tax cheat and traitorous American. That was as a favour to Rich's wife, who was a generous contributor to Clinton's campaigns. Despite a chorus of negative comments from Democratic pols about the pardon--"Contemptible", "disgraceful" and "brain-dead" were the kinder ones--Clinton always saw it as nothing more than a political mistake which would harm his reputation.
Anson shows how Clinton became a pariah to his fellow Democrats. During this year's senate and gubernatorial races, some candidates refused his offer to help get out the vote. Janet Reno, his former Attorney-General, wouldn't even put his name in her campaign biography. Where he did help, the Democrats lost five out of six gubernatorial races. In the Senate races, they watched the Republicans clean up. Clinton had predicted the Democrats would pick up 12 to 15 new seats. His comment on the losses, "So we lost a few elections. Big deal!" Lately, Clinton has decided that he will be the "Mandela" of the fight against AIDS. He brushes off criticism about his lack of interest in the disease while he was President. Unfortunately, his attack plan was centered on drugs to keep AIDS's victim alive longer. The drug companies and other AIDS activists say that prevention is the only long term solution. Giving irresponsible African AIDS carriers greater longevity simply allows them to infect more people, thus spreading the disease into new areas. But staying on focus was never Bill's strong suit, so now he spreads his time between numerous enthusiasms. Besides which, Bush's pledge to spend $15 billion on AIDS has shifted the spotlight away from Bill, and Bill hates that. So you will see his name pop up from time to time connected with this or that cause of the moment. His handlers and biographers are afraid to open the papers every day because they fear his cause de jour might be another version of Monica Lewinsky. Meanwhile as his presidential poll ratings continue to drop, Clinton wanders in the political twilight, trying to figure out how it all ended so poorly.
Isn't a laudable intellect a terrible thing to waste? The problem for Bill was that his mind started in his nether regions and, when subsequently, he exercised it, it tended to move back to the starting point -- perhaps his need to be loved above all else -- but then, marriage to that harridan would cause most men's minds to wander south -- to warmer climes, I suspect. Is that too . . . coming from a woman? NJC
A few Nasty Credit Card Facts
PBS' Frontline presented an expose on how the credit card companies trick you into becoming debtors. My first eye-opener was to realize that the industry's term for me was "deadbeat". In the perverse world of credit, someone who faithfully pays of his balance is given this term of approbation. The "winners' therefore must be the saps who pay off only the monthly minimum, thus condemning themselves to punitive charges. A $200 purchase paid off with only the minimum payment each month would take 35 years to clear. The PBS interviewer talked to Carl Crahn, the guru of the credit business. He was the guy who introduced "zero credit charges" for a set period. The ploy was to get people to run up huge charges, then slap them with 18.7% interest. Typically, they couldn't pay it all off, so then and now, they are on debt the merry-go-round. Also if they don't pay off the full balance after a period, their interest rate gets jacked up to 25%.
The entire program was filled with chilling factoids. For instance, if you allow debt to pile up on your Mastercard, that can affect your interest rate on your Visa. Even store credit card debt is taken into consideration. And forget about trying to understand the four page agreement you sign upon getting a card. A professional accountant, with her degree from Harvard, admitted that she didn't understand it, even after hours of scrutiny. None of the major card companies would grant an interview with PBS, but a few insiders did. They admitted that it seemed foolish to give cards to college kids, who were already in debt for their studies and had no proven track record of gainful employment. However it is worth the risk of some of them defaulting, so that the rest got used to using (and hopefully, misusing) plastic. Get them while they are most irresponsible and possibly have parents that will cover for them. One bright light, don't despair if you file for bankruptcy and are told you're cut off all future cards. They don't really mean it. Sooner or later they will be sending you applications for new cards--albeit, maybe with a lower credit limit. You, unlike me, have proven that you are not a "deadbeat".
I found Bud's information on credit cards shocking. Does your child attend university or other post high school training and has a credit card been issued to him/her? Act, before your child is caught in this cycle. Rip up the blinking card while showing what Bud wrote.
Credit -- the modern opiate of the masses. Keep 'em in debt. Remember, to paraphrase someone I know, 'when you've got them by the glassies, their hearts and minds will follow'. No wonder governments love debt; it keeps citizens from thinking about other infringements on their lives and other pressing concerns such as security and whether our government has spent government money in Canadians' interest -- or in their own. NJC
