Miles Report No. 25

Accountability to cover up lack of transparency

Overview

The political catchwords “transparency and accountability” can be manipulated to create nice verbal platitudes that feed the sycophantic followers of a political party but the reality comes through from the actions taken. What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.

In the current case of the illustrious and pompous Mike Duffy, government actions say quite a bit. But what they say is contrary to the verbalized meanings of the words.

If everything were transparent there would not be a need for an accountability act that comes into play only after unethical or illegal actions are revealed. The Accountability Act signifies that one need not be transparent until the perpetrator of some unethical or illegal action is “caught,” and then the Act will come into play to provide a talking point to try and divert attention away from the real issue, to obfuscate the real issue.

From watching recent news broadcasts, (Question Period with Kevin Newman, and The West Block with Tom Clark) there appear to be two talking points the Harper Conservatives are using to cover up the bizarre manipulations from the PMO’s office. The first talking point is the Accountability Act itself and all the jargon that can be associated with that. The second talking point is ‘saving the taxpayer,’ a completely spurious argument, but one that the ignorant masses of Conservative supporters will buy into.

But maybe not

I first watched Brent Rathgeber talking about the response of his constituents, his supporters, and their concerns about what is happening on Parliament Hill. His comments indicated that even they were not supportive of the lack of ethical behaviour (at the minimum) from the PMO’s office. Rathgeber’s statements tended to indicate that someone needed to step in and say something about it in caucus. But really, after all these years, the closer people come to the centre of power in the Harper government, the more they flip out the talking points, and those further away are simply spineless unthinking worshippers of the Harper cult. No, I am wrong there, all Harper supporters seem to be relatively spineless and unthinking.

Kellie Leitch, for example

I cannot even remember the topic now, but I do recall Kellie Leitch presenting her parties positions during a ‘trilateral’ interview. For someone as intelligent as she must be, as a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon by training, her command of the talking point was commendable - at least for the party faithful. But it makes me wonder how someone with such capabilities of intelligence can willingly subordinate themselves to a party line and continually reiterate a talking point that avoids answering the fundamental questions being presented. It must be the cult of faith surrounding the power and control of the Harper government.

Body language says a lot

Kellie Leitch always seems to carry a supercilious smile and I suppose if she ever gets to read this, that same smile will be there as well - good for the supporters, but definitely antagonistic to others.

Which leads to Michelle Rempel’s interviews concerning the Duffy/Wright/Accountability affairs. Her spin was all about the Accountability Act. Yet anyone who is capable of reading body language would note, she was extremely uncomfortable being questioned and truly did not believe that the Accountability Act was going to do much - as the repeated phrasing about ‘from here forward’ - just great, we won’t worry about what has happened but from now on we will try to account for it. That only returns to my previous statement about the Act simply being a cover up for lack of transparency until caught in flagrante delicto. (Sorry, that’s a tautology).

Above all, what is done speaks so loud, what the body language says speaks so loud, that all the spin doctoring does is indicate that the Harper government recognizes their guilt but is going to do their utmost to cover it up and blather it away with talking points.

Finally, back to Pierre

When the news items first came out, Pierre Poilievre argued that it was a good move to save taxpayers money, to “protect the taxpayer.” What complete and utter hogwash that was. Surely there must be a Churchill quote in there somewhere (even if he was a racist imperialist vis a vis the Boers of South Africa and the “savages“ in Iraq) that he could also use to support his position? I mean, if you can’t say something meaningful and intelligent yourself, it is always good to quote someone much more erudite and famous than oneself in order to appear intelligent.

Conclusion

It is almost impossible to argue logically and constructively with a group of people, a cult that has apparently blind faith in their dear leader, that all they try to do is throw out talking points to obfuscate what has really happened. What you say (about accountability and transparency) is fully in conflict with what you do (actions designed for power and control).

You speak of principles, but the only principles your actions speak of are power and control.