Wednesday, May 12, 2004
I guess you call this love, I call it room service
Well, time for my third post of the day. Since I have no life, I figure I might as well spend as much time as possible entertaining the rest of you, who also have no lives, as evidenced by the fact that you're entertained by my blog. The lifeless entertaining the lifeless - kind of like All My Children.
Anyway, before you read on to the meat of the entry - which is, in a stunning burst of originality, me mocking Ralph Klein - you should all mosey electronically over to Marc's Blog read his attempt to get me in a penis measuring contest with a female American soldier. You should read it not because he tried to get me into a penis-measuring contest with a female American soldier, but because, after doing so, he says nice things about me. Also note his description of this blog on his blogroll. I'm going to steal a technique from Krista and reveal the moral of this post: the best way (indeed, possibly the only for those of you who aren't Paul Wells, to make me direct traffic your way is to say nice things about me on your blog.
Anyway, onwards to the Klein-bashing...
In the midst of all of the outrage, most of which can be found in this blog, over the Premier's rapid descent into madness, there is one outrage that is oft-overlooked: that Conservative MLAs on the Legislature's Public Accounts Committee were being fed questions to ask the Premier by the Public Affairs Office. For those of you who haven't heard about it because you were too busy gawking about Klein's own embarassing performance at the committee, the government's Communications Office - the portion of the bureaucracy, technically non-partisan, responsible for communications between the government and its citizenry - provided the Conservative MLAs on the committee with a list of questions that they should ask the Premier in his first appearance before the committee in years.
Now, grant me one paragraph about Separation of Powers before I go back to things that the rest of you care about. Under a parliamentary system, there is no real separation of powers, in that the head of the Executive branch - the Cabinet - is generally a subset, or very close to a subset, of the Legislative branch. While I think this system is manatee stool, let's proceed on the assumption that it isn't. Even in a parliamentary system, there should be a separation between *branches* of government, in that the Premier fills two distinct roles: he is a legislator - generally the legislator responsible for "leading" the Legislature Branch - and also the head of the Executive branch, responsible for implementing (or, for those of you who like linguistics, executing) the legislation that is set by the Legislature (generally at his own request). When the Premier is acting in his Executive capacity, he is totally subservient to the Legislative branch (which he just so happens to have wrapped around his little finger, though this is moot from a structural perspective). Being in charge of the Public Affairs Office is one of the Premier's Executive functions. Being responsible for all government expenditures is also an Executive function, and it was in this capacity that our Premier was appearing before the Public Accounts Committee. Backbench Tory MLAs are in no way part of the Executive branch of government, only the Legislative branch, so they, as members of the committee, were clearly there in their Legislative capacity. To put it crudely (and not precisely accurately, but accurately enough for our purposes), Legislative trumps Executive. Ralph Klein was appearing before the Public Accounts Committee as an Executive member, and was therefore subservient to the Legislature, which was represented in this case by the Public Accounts Committee. So the fact that the Public Affairs Bureau, a body that reports to Klein in his Executive capacity (and which has increasingly been used to justify the government's *legislative* agenda to the public, though that's a different outrage), was telling legislators what questions to ask is utterly outrageous and constitutes a clear attempt by Klein, as head of the Executive branch, to exert control over the Legislative branch (if you want a parallel, try to imagine Liberal members of the Ottawa version of the Public Accounts Comittee asking questions in the Sponsorship Inquiry that were scripted by Alfonso Gagliano's Executive Assistant - this is no less bizarre).
Sadly, that's only the second most outrageous part of this story. After all, Klein deserves to have his hands slapped or cut off or something for even making the attempt, but any Legislative body worth its salt would have just laughed in his face and maybe removed him from office. The *most* outrageous part of this story, and the part for which I cannot blame Klein, is that the Tory MLAs complied! Every damned one of them! Not a single question was asked by a Conservative MLA in the Public Accounts Committee that had its origins somewhere other than the Public Affairs Bureau ("You don't believe me?" excluded, but we've already established that Klein wasn't there in his capacity as an MLA). Now put yourself in the places of these MLAs: you are a representative of the people of the province, sitting on a committee of the province's legislative body responsible for identifying misspending and calling the government to account for it. There have been allegations that the government has been misspending money, and the Premier himself is appearing before your committee (for the first time in a decade) to refute these allegations. It is up to you, the committee, to determine truth. Then, along comes a bureaucrat who works in a department that reports directly to the Premier (who, you'll recall from the last sentence, is appearing before the Committee for the express purpose of defending his departmental expenditures), and suggests to you which questions you should ask. Now, Mr. MLA, I ask you: how much sense does it make for you, the guardians of the public purse, to take these suggestions? The correct answer, as those of you who are not drooling vegetables or Tory MLAs or both have already realized, is as follows: none. None at all. To allow a subordinate of the Premier to script the questions you ask in your attempts at determining whether or not the Premier has overseen misspending is nothing short of a gross and offensive abdication of responsibility. We don't have foxes guarding the henhouse; we have sacks of bloody potatoes guarding the henhouse.
Now, let's talk about elections for a moment. Most Albertans who vote provincially vote for the Tory candidate in their riding. I know for a fact that a number of you, Dear Readers, have histories of voting for Tory candidates in your ridings. Maybe you do so because, in your own little misguided way, you support the Klein government. That's fine (well no, actually it's not, but we won't get into that here). But you don't vote for Klein, unless you live in Calgary-Elbow. You vote for an MLA to represent you. One way that MLA may choose to represent you is to uphold the government on confidence motions, but that's only one. Another, presumably, would be to exercise the legislative role of government oversight - what limited checks and balances exist in the parliamentary system depend on this. Presumably, MLAs who got on the Public Accounts Committee have a special interest in this aspect of their job. And every single damned one of them failed to perform the most basic aspect of it.
This has nothing to do with ideology. It doesn't even have anything to do with the fitness of the Klein government to govern. This is about a certain basic level of competence that ought to be a prerequisite for public service, and how many of our MLAs don't meet it. Any Tory member of the Public Accounts Committee who goes into the re-election campaign unrepentant for the above-noted sins deserves to be defeated on that basis alone, and any voter who votes for one of them is as strong an argument against universal suffrage as I am likely to see in my lifetime. In conclusion: Jesus fuck, people.
Probably coming at some point: A Brief and Poorly-Researched Tribute to Eric Kierans.
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Well, time for my third post of the day. Since I have no life, I figure I might as well spend as much time as possible entertaining the rest of you, who also have no lives, as evidenced by the fact that you're entertained by my blog. The lifeless entertaining the lifeless - kind of like All My Children.
Anyway, before you read on to the meat of the entry - which is, in a stunning burst of originality, me mocking Ralph Klein - you should all mosey electronically over to Marc's Blog read his attempt to get me in a penis measuring contest with a female American soldier. You should read it not because he tried to get me into a penis-measuring contest with a female American soldier, but because, after doing so, he says nice things about me. Also note his description of this blog on his blogroll. I'm going to steal a technique from Krista and reveal the moral of this post: the best way (indeed, possibly the only for those of you who aren't Paul Wells, to make me direct traffic your way is to say nice things about me on your blog.
Anyway, onwards to the Klein-bashing...
In the midst of all of the outrage, most of which can be found in this blog, over the Premier's rapid descent into madness, there is one outrage that is oft-overlooked: that Conservative MLAs on the Legislature's Public Accounts Committee were being fed questions to ask the Premier by the Public Affairs Office. For those of you who haven't heard about it because you were too busy gawking about Klein's own embarassing performance at the committee, the government's Communications Office - the portion of the bureaucracy, technically non-partisan, responsible for communications between the government and its citizenry - provided the Conservative MLAs on the committee with a list of questions that they should ask the Premier in his first appearance before the committee in years.
Now, grant me one paragraph about Separation of Powers before I go back to things that the rest of you care about. Under a parliamentary system, there is no real separation of powers, in that the head of the Executive branch - the Cabinet - is generally a subset, or very close to a subset, of the Legislative branch. While I think this system is manatee stool, let's proceed on the assumption that it isn't. Even in a parliamentary system, there should be a separation between *branches* of government, in that the Premier fills two distinct roles: he is a legislator - generally the legislator responsible for "leading" the Legislature Branch - and also the head of the Executive branch, responsible for implementing (or, for those of you who like linguistics, executing) the legislation that is set by the Legislature (generally at his own request). When the Premier is acting in his Executive capacity, he is totally subservient to the Legislative branch (which he just so happens to have wrapped around his little finger, though this is moot from a structural perspective). Being in charge of the Public Affairs Office is one of the Premier's Executive functions. Being responsible for all government expenditures is also an Executive function, and it was in this capacity that our Premier was appearing before the Public Accounts Committee. Backbench Tory MLAs are in no way part of the Executive branch of government, only the Legislative branch, so they, as members of the committee, were clearly there in their Legislative capacity. To put it crudely (and not precisely accurately, but accurately enough for our purposes), Legislative trumps Executive. Ralph Klein was appearing before the Public Accounts Committee as an Executive member, and was therefore subservient to the Legislature, which was represented in this case by the Public Accounts Committee. So the fact that the Public Affairs Bureau, a body that reports to Klein in his Executive capacity (and which has increasingly been used to justify the government's *legislative* agenda to the public, though that's a different outrage), was telling legislators what questions to ask is utterly outrageous and constitutes a clear attempt by Klein, as head of the Executive branch, to exert control over the Legislative branch (if you want a parallel, try to imagine Liberal members of the Ottawa version of the Public Accounts Comittee asking questions in the Sponsorship Inquiry that were scripted by Alfonso Gagliano's Executive Assistant - this is no less bizarre).
Sadly, that's only the second most outrageous part of this story. After all, Klein deserves to have his hands slapped or cut off or something for even making the attempt, but any Legislative body worth its salt would have just laughed in his face and maybe removed him from office. The *most* outrageous part of this story, and the part for which I cannot blame Klein, is that the Tory MLAs complied! Every damned one of them! Not a single question was asked by a Conservative MLA in the Public Accounts Committee that had its origins somewhere other than the Public Affairs Bureau ("You don't believe me?" excluded, but we've already established that Klein wasn't there in his capacity as an MLA). Now put yourself in the places of these MLAs: you are a representative of the people of the province, sitting on a committee of the province's legislative body responsible for identifying misspending and calling the government to account for it. There have been allegations that the government has been misspending money, and the Premier himself is appearing before your committee (for the first time in a decade) to refute these allegations. It is up to you, the committee, to determine truth. Then, along comes a bureaucrat who works in a department that reports directly to the Premier (who, you'll recall from the last sentence, is appearing before the Committee for the express purpose of defending his departmental expenditures), and suggests to you which questions you should ask. Now, Mr. MLA, I ask you: how much sense does it make for you, the guardians of the public purse, to take these suggestions? The correct answer, as those of you who are not drooling vegetables or Tory MLAs or both have already realized, is as follows: none. None at all. To allow a subordinate of the Premier to script the questions you ask in your attempts at determining whether or not the Premier has overseen misspending is nothing short of a gross and offensive abdication of responsibility. We don't have foxes guarding the henhouse; we have sacks of bloody potatoes guarding the henhouse.
Now, let's talk about elections for a moment. Most Albertans who vote provincially vote for the Tory candidate in their riding. I know for a fact that a number of you, Dear Readers, have histories of voting for Tory candidates in your ridings. Maybe you do so because, in your own little misguided way, you support the Klein government. That's fine (well no, actually it's not, but we won't get into that here). But you don't vote for Klein, unless you live in Calgary-Elbow. You vote for an MLA to represent you. One way that MLA may choose to represent you is to uphold the government on confidence motions, but that's only one. Another, presumably, would be to exercise the legislative role of government oversight - what limited checks and balances exist in the parliamentary system depend on this. Presumably, MLAs who got on the Public Accounts Committee have a special interest in this aspect of their job. And every single damned one of them failed to perform the most basic aspect of it.
This has nothing to do with ideology. It doesn't even have anything to do with the fitness of the Klein government to govern. This is about a certain basic level of competence that ought to be a prerequisite for public service, and how many of our MLAs don't meet it. Any Tory member of the Public Accounts Committee who goes into the re-election campaign unrepentant for the above-noted sins deserves to be defeated on that basis alone, and any voter who votes for one of them is as strong an argument against universal suffrage as I am likely to see in my lifetime. In conclusion: Jesus fuck, people.
Probably coming at some point: A Brief and Poorly-Researched Tribute to Eric Kierans.
