Daily Reading for Tuesday
November 28th, 2011
- Pushed Left has been doing the research I said the media wouldn’t do by looking into the election hoax phone calls which occurred in several ridings. She suggests that an outfit with Conservative ties, called the Responsive Marketing Group, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Ruling Party during the past election campaign, and might be responsible for the hoax calls.
- Climate Progress takes a closer look at the latest set of leaked “climate e-mails” from East Anglia and finds, unsurprisingly, that they sound a lot more mundane and trivial when the headline comments are put back in context. I say unsurprising, because National Post flake Terence Corcoran openly described his climate change denialist method as involving “out of context” quotes.
- Pogge notes that the federal anti-tobacco program ended up dispersing many millions of dollars to tobacco farmers to give up growing tobacco crops, while the crops kept growing anyways. I think the only thing that should be added to this account is that Harper’s campaign manager in the last election, lobbyist Jason Lietaer, has among other high points on his C.V. his many years fronting for Ontario tobacco growers, who were the chief beneficiaries of this debacle of a subsidy program.
- The Department of National Defence has been caught fibbing about the $600 million price-tag of their reno of the former Nortel campus in Ottawa. Given that the government was already convicted of contempt of Parliament once over military lies, and also the increasing number of military uniforms on Ottawa streets, I can’t say this news is particularly surprising either. Incidentally, you might think such an unprecented conviction would be enough to override the media’s usual poor memory, but no such luck; the Citizen mentions a few other past problems in DND accounting, but not the most important one.
- Government press releases were never exactly shining examples of deep thought and critical reflection, but this one beggars belief. It is rapidly becoming clear how little this government actually cares about democratic engagement. Who exactly is this pathetic litany supposed to be written for?
Jon
Is that a press release or a late-night infomercial? I kept looking for the flashing “not an actor/satisfied customer” and “But wait! There’s more!” If we call right now, will the Harper Government Parent and Grandparent Super Visa come with an additional gift of $20 value absolutely free, just pay shipping and handling?
Hartley
Wow, I go to read the 1st link, and guess what?
No longer exists…
But I found this on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=260348091419&topic=13821
Jon
You can still get the first link (for now anyways) by searching for it in Google and then using the Google cache to view the page.
I wonder if the blogger took the post down for her own reasons, or if someone afraid that the post was on track to uncover criminal activity made a takedown request to Google.