One
law for the rich, one for the cynical
by
Robert LaFrance
Last week, after my column appeared,
someone told me I was being too cynical and pessimistic. A newspaper reporter
and columnist, cynical?
Those alleged $236 million in cuts
in our health care department will of course all come down to one thing – close
rural hospitals so that cabinet ministers and city newspaper editors can make
sure THEIR hospitals are ‘ready, aya, ready!’ when the flashing lights appear
in their driveways.
More than any other time in my 65
years, rural New Brunswick is being victimized, marginalized, downsized and any
number of other words that end in ‘ized’. Every time I open my daily paper from
the city, there’s yet another story about us selfish rural residents who won’t
do the decent thing and become city dwellers, or cheer when the governments
move more of our services to the cities.
Look at all the money we’re wasting
on rural schools when we could just bus all the kids to the nearest city. Look
at the money we waste by having our blood samples collected here and then sent
at great expense to Saint John or Timbuktu. Why, we should just take the 6-hour
drive, down and back, to save them all that trouble of sending it.
That rant’s over. Let’s move on to
the next one.
*****************************
In my never-ending rant on
redundancy, I refer you to one of the latest – ‘moving forward’. People, and I
include politicians in that category, often slip that phrase into a sentence
that is perfectly happy without it. Watch for it, and sneer when you hear it.
It joins our old friends ‘hot water heater’, ‘continue on’, and
‘all-pervasive’. Oh, yes, and there’s another old favourite: ‘at this
particular moment in time’. Wouldn’t the word ‘now’ suffice?
And another thing, how is a
‘forensic audit’ different from a regular audit? Do they have a team of CSI
type investigators looking for bloodstains on the company’s two sets of books?
Also, if I hear the word ‘iconic’ one more time, referring to a celebrity, I
shall, in the words of Beatrix Potter, go distracted.
******************************
Speaking of audits, Senator Pamela
Wallin’s expense claims are about to hit the fan. A new report I just heard on
CBC Radio (93.3 FM) said that some of the details have leaked out “and it is
said to be even worse than Mike Duffy’s”. Whew! Can we stand any more claims of
these fat cats (as the saying goes) ripping us off?
Let me see now…we have senators who
haven’t, to this point, had to provide any proof whatsoever of their expense
claims. The fox in the chicken coop indeed!
Readers, let’s all be honest.
Suppose each of us was or were allowed to claim up to $50 for a meal when we
are (allegedly) doing government business. Suppose we went to Tilley Takeout
and the meal came to $15.46. Wouldn’t there be just a WEE bit of temptation to
round that off to $39.50? Or perhaps even fifty dollars just to keep the
numbers even. After all, we have to think of the person adding up the expenses.
Wouldn’t $50 be easier for him or her to add up than $15.46?
Back to Pamela Wallin: During their
careers as CTV journalists, they exposed more than one example of fraud and the
fixing of books. Didn’t they think of that when they made their ‘clerical
errors’ that will probably end up totalling a quarter million dollars or? I’ve
been watching the news coverage and I have formed the opinion that the CTV reporters
on this story are even more vicious than Duffy and Wallin were in their day.
********************************
Another story I have been watching
with interest is the Oland murder case from Saint John. It is always
enlightening to watch the entire newscast and see stories about other murders.
In those cases, where the accused is not associated with a large pile of money,
the murder might take place on a Tuesday and by Friday the trial is over and
the accused is sent to the gallows.
Oops. A bit of exaggeration there.
The point, of course, is that when the suspect has money or access to money it
seems to take longer for ‘justice’ to be served. But I suppose justice, like
revenge, is a dish best served cold.
Let each of us picture if we were the
suspect in the case. Would it be twenty-five months or so before my name or
your name were released to the public? I fear not. More like twenty-five
minutes.
If I were a cynical type I would say
that there’s ‘one law for the rich and one law for the poor’ but let us
remember that Dennis Oland hasn’t even been charged yet and it may well be that
someone else did the dirty deed. However, for our Canadian law to work,
shouldn’t it at least seem to be applied equally to rich and poor?
-end-
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