2022-19

Wednesday June 15, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 15, 2022

Rudy Giuliani, drunk on conspiracy theories

President Donald Trump, his former aides testified, faced a fateful choice on election night 2020: Heed the best advice of his top political and legal advisers? Or go with the erratic drunk guy?

January 6, 2022

Trump chose Option No. 2.

“President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night,” Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) alleged at the start of Monday’s hearing of the House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, “and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that the vote counting stop, to falsely claim everything was fraudulent.”

A video of Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, flashed on the screen above the dais in the Cannon Caucus Room. “The mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Miller testified, but “I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president.”

What, he wasn’t carrying a Breathalyzer?

July 20, 2021

Whatever his blood alcohol level, Giuliani’s nonsense quotient was over the limit. He was saying, “We won it, they’re stealing it from us,” Miller recounted. And “anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.”

So Trump did as Giuliani instructed: He cried fraud and declared victory.

Giuliani, once America’s Mayor and Time’s Person of the Year, long ago became a national punchline, with his melting hair dye and his post-election news conference at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping. But thanks to the select committee, we now know that people inside the Trump administration and campaign also thought him preposterous — with one key exception: Trump.

The committee relived some of Giuliani’s most ludicrous claims, sometimes accompanied by footage of his wild-eyed TV appearances. Votes “in garbage cans” and in “shopping baskets” being wheeled in for counting under orders from Frankfurt, Germany. Eight thousand dead people voting in Pennsylvania. A suitcase full of ballots pulled from under a table in Georgia. Votes manipulated via Italy, the Philippines and a deceased communist dictator in Venezuela.

February 26, 2021

In depositions screened by the committee, a veritable parade of Trump advisers testified that they told the president what they thought of such ideas: “Bull—t.” “Completely bogus.” “Silly.” “Completely nuts.” “Crazy.” “Incorrect.” “Debunked.” “Idiotic.”

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, in his videotaped deposition, wondered aloud whether Giuliani, “at this stage of his life,” had “the same ability to manage things at this level or not.”

Trump campaign lawyer Matt Morgan, in his deposition, spoke about his conversations with outside counsel: “The general consensus was that law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making.”

But Trump still sided with Giuliani’s lunacies — which “demoralized” the attorney general, Bill Barr. “I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has … become detached from reality.’”

January 8, 2021

Barr worked for Trump for two years before this occurred to him?

Even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, no profile in courage, testified that he disagreed with Crazy Rudy. Asked in his deposition whether he ever shared with Trump his “perspective” on Giuliani, Kushner paused 10 seconds as he searched for a reply: “Um … I, I guess … [Sigh] … Yes.” Finally, Kushner said he told Trump it was “basically, not the approach I would take if I was you.”

The committee played the deposition of Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, in which he testified that he disassociated himself from Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims. “There were two groups,” he said, “my team and Rudy’s team.” Stepien’s was, he said, “Team Normal.”

But Trump disbanded Team Normal the second week after the election. Instead, he arranged for “Mayor Giuliani to be moved in as the person in charge of the legal side of the campaign, and, for all intents and purposes, the campaign.”

May 14, 2021

A Republican-appointed U.S. attorney from Georgia explained how he chased down the Giuliani allegation that a “black suitcase” stuffed with ballots was the “smoking gun”: It was “actually an official ballot box,” handled correctly.

A former Republican official from Pennsylvania testified about investigating Giuliani’s claim to the state legislature that 8,000 dead people voted. “Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t evidence of eight.”

A supposed 68 percent error rate of Michigan voting machines? Trump Justice Department official Richard Donoghue’s deposition said the actual error rate was 0.0063 percent.

But the debunking of each zany conspiracy theory (“whack-a-mole” was Barr’s description) would only cause Trump to “move to another allegation,” Donoghue testified.

January 31, 2008

And so the “big lie” was born — of no evidence but limitless repetition. Even now, Giuliani is, well, drunk on the idea.

“If you gave me the paper ballots, I could probably turn around each one of these states,” he said to the Jan. 6 committee in his own deposition. “I’d pull out enough that were fraudulent that it would shake the hell out of the country.”

Thanks, Rudy. But Team Abnormal has already done damage enough. (The Washington Post) 

 

Tuesday June 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 14, 2022

It’s time for Pierre Poilievre to get serious

May 13, 2022

Does Pierre Poilievre believe in vaccinating kids against measles and mumps and chickenpox? How about polio?

The question may sound ridiculous. After all, mass vaccination, compulsory in some provinces as a condition of attending school, has succeeded in all but eliminating these and other childhood diseases.

But to read Poilievre’s recent comments is to come away wondering whether the Ottawa MP and front-runner for the Conservative leadership might well roll all that back if he had the power to do so.

He introduced a private members’ bill in the House of Commons this month that would prevent the federal government from imposing vaccine mandates on travellers and federal workers. But in his tweets he goes further, saying the point is to “scrap all vaccine mandates and ban any and all future vaccine mandates” in the name of upholding “medical freedom.”

So what about that polio vaccine? It’s a provincial medical matter, of course, but in principle does he find requiring parents to get their kids vaccinated before they go to school (as Ontario, New Brunswick and to a lesser extent Manitoba do) an outrage against his concept of “medical freedom?”

May 18, 2022

Who knows? It’s all rather vague and perhaps that’s the point. In his quest for the national Conservative leadership it seems there are no limits on what Poilievre is prepared to say to curry favour with the angry anti-vax constituency in his party, the same people prone to disappear down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about globalist plots to run the world.

This matters more than ever now that Poilievre is heading to almost certain victory in the leadership race. His campaign says it’s signed up almost 312,000 new members — considerably more than the total enlisted by all candidates in the party’s last leadership contest two years ago.

Those new members have to actually vote, of course, and much depends on which ridings they come from. But it’s an enormous number and it means the leadership is now Poilievre’s to lose.

That would put him at the head of one of the country’s great national political parties. And with political pendulums swinging as they do, he’ll have a good shot at winning power once the public grows tired of the Liberals and Justin Trudeau. Anyone tempted to write Poilievre off because he sounds so extreme right now should think again.

February 2, 2022

Which is why his views on things like vaccine mandates and those conspiracy theories actually matter. How much of what he’s saying now is based on sincere belief, and how much is just a cynical bid for votes among the Conservatives’ furious fringe?

It’s hard to believe, for example, that he actually believes those conspiracy theories about how the World Economic Forum, the annual elite talk-shop in Davos, Switzerland, is actually ground zero for a quasi-socialist attempt to remake western economies.

In its wackier variations, conspiracists suggest Davos is behind a plot to invent COVID-19 just to sell vaccines, or even to use vaccinations as a way to inject 5G-enabled surveillance chips into unsuspecting citizens. Poilievre, we assume, sees this as the nonsense that it is. But he’s still happy to give the conspiracy-mongers political comfort.

February 8, 2022

The point is not that a Poilievre government would push all this on the public. But at the moment he is riding a tiger. It looks like it’s carrying him to the Conservative leadership, but he’s feeding forces that he may not be able to control down the road.

It’s time for Poilievre to get serious and make clear where he stands on all this. Becoming leader of one of the country’s national parties carries with it great responsibility. Fuelling fringe theories and casting doubt on whether he would fight a future pandemic fails that test spectacularly. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Saturday June 11, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 11, 2022

A toast to bad roads and integrity

Today, a little positivity seems in order. And so, two tips of the proverbial chapeau.

February 13, 2015

First, to the Canadian Automobile Association, which just released its annual worst roads in Ontario report. Not because Hamilton gets top billing, as home of the worst road in the province — Barton Street East. And not because the report also has a regional component which tells us the worst roads in Hamilton are Barton East, Aberdeen Avenue, Burlington Street East, Upper James and Rymal Road East.

Anyone who drives the city will confirm that these are among the worst, although there are just so many to choose from.

May 19, 2021

No, we raise a glass to the CAA because its annual report is so useful in many ways. It keeps the state of our roads on the public and government radar. It is holistic in the sense that it doesn’t just ask drivers to vote, it includes pedestrian and cyclists. Too often city streets are judged too much on the whims of motorists, when those arteries are so much more.

The CAA’s report is also a good reality check. You don’t have to look far to find a Hamiltonian who will swear that this city’s roads are simply the worst anywhere. No doubt it seems that way sometimes, but the report’s wide lens confirms that road conditions are terrible in many if not most Ontario cities. Toronto and Prince Edward County are other municipalities that made the worst-of-the-worst list again this year.

March 30, 2022

The truth is that nearly all Ontario cities, especially the older ones like Hamilton, have brutal infrastructure deficits, and roads figure prominently. Municipal governments, ours included, are always running behind trying to keep up. Using the Barton Street example, city hall has plans to spend $7.5 million over the next two years on Barton area streets and sidewalks. By the time that is done, there will be another street on the worst-of list, and more competing demands for money and resource time to fix them.

Not to let city hall off the hook entirely, but it’s worth bearing in mind that our worst roads are often in the industrial heartland of the city, where heavy truck traffic takes its toll more than where traffic is largely residential and commercial. Upper James may be an exception to a point, although it too carries its share of heavy truck traffic across the top of the city to downtown.

A final note: We also love the CAA roads report because it never fails to generate lots of reader comments and letters. We can’t get too many of those, so thanks CAA. See you next year. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

L E T T E R  to the  E D I T O R

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, June 16, 2022

Hamilton’s future

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, June 16, 2022

I am very disappointed in both The Spectator for printing Graeme MacKay’s Saturday editorial cartoon and in Mr. MacKay for creating it. First, to The Spectator — Hamilton is actually part of your newspaper’s name. Too bad you do not accurately promote the city.

But mostly my disappointment is with Mr. MacKay whom I thought would have better knowledge of the LRT project which is such a vital part of Hamilton’s future. I’m pretty sure he actually lives in the area and should be better informed.

The many misinformed who are anti-LRT never did get the fact that a very vital part of the LRT construction is to repair aging infrastructure along the LRT route. These repairs and the LRT project overall will take the city into a much better future. And the monetary value of LRT (business, taxes, etc.) will take care of some potholes, too.

Jane Slote, Hamilton

 

Friday June 10, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 10, 2022

Easier to use than lose the monarchy

June 11, 2016

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations have come and gone in this country without a lot of the Canadian public even realizing they were ever even here. In the United Kingdom, a four-day feel-good holiday saw 2,000 street parties, rock concerts and thousands of jubilant Brits cheering the monarch outside Buckingham Palace. Our Commonwealth cousins, the Australians, enthusiastically kicked up their heels in four days of festivities, too, as landmarks across their antipodean nation were bathed in royal-purple lights, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lit a special Commonwealth beacon and an island was renamed in Elizabeth’s honour. But in Canada, the loudest sounds came from crickets.

The best you can say about the federal government’s underwhelming response is that it was a foolproof cure for insomnia. Yes, there was a three-day whirlwind tour in May of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, that saw them stop in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa and the Northwest Territories but, strangely, get nowhere near any of the country’s very biggest cities. Ho hum. If the government had deliberately set out to stage a mainly invisible non-event, it could not have succeeded better, something John Fraser, of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada called “embarrassing.”

July 11, 2020

Fraser may be in the minority. An Angus Reid poll from April reported that 51 per cent of respondents oppose this country continuing as a constitutional monarchy, though most by far personally admired the Queen. Yet despite such ambivalent views, there are strong reasons to conclude Canada just missed out on several nationally-unifying opportunities. First — and whatever the future holds for the Canadian Crown — we squandered the chance to properly commemorate Elizabeth’s extraordinary achievement of being the longest reigning monarch in not just British but Canadian history. It was an ungenerous move on Ottawa’s part.

The beating heart of this jubilee is a woman who has committed her life to public service since 1952 and continues to make a few public appearances at the age of 96. As Canada’s head of state, she has done everything this country has asked of her for 70 years, ever since Louis St. Laurent was prime minister. To be sure, Canada has changed phenomenally since she ascended the throne; but she remains a living symbol of our shared traditions and values as well as a cornerstone of Canadian democracy.

January 13, 2020

That brings us to Point 2: Had Ottawa marked this jubilee with more than indifference it could have reminded Canadians that we remain a constitutional monarchy. The Crown is embedded in the warp and woof of our political fabric and speaks to the deliberate division between our Head of State (the Queen) and the head of government (Justin Trudeau). Power, legally speaking, resides in the Crown even though the Queen and her representative, the Governor General, use it rarely and only in urgent situations. But while the PM and his government wield the power, they do so only with House of Commons majority support. They are ephemeral. The Crown is permanent, or at least it has been throughout the 155 years of Canadian Confederation.

Time, of course, frays many traditional bonds. And with the ongoing reckoning with a colonial past that too often devastated Indigenous Peoples, the old bonds, symbols and ways are increasingly being questioned and, in some cases, tossed. But those who would criticize the monarchy in this country face an uphill slog if they want to dump it. For starters, we’d have to decide what should replace the monarchy. Do we elect a governor general in a nationwide vote? Sounds complicated. How about a republic, with an all-powerful president as head of state — someone who might turn out to be a Donald Trump? Oops.

July 24, 2019

And even if someone came up with a reasonable alternative, divesting ourselves of the Crown could never happen without the approval of the House of Commons, Senate, and every provincial legislature. That constitutional bar’s almost impossible to clear. And remember: When the changes proposed in the Meech Lake accord failed to achieve this in the 1990s, the result was a national unity crisis, a near-miss for Quebec separation and the destruction of the old Progressive Conservative party. Want to dance through this mine field again?

As a respected and, in some quarters, beloved monarch heads into her final years, perhaps we should have these discussions. But people should speak up with their eyes wide open. A little clear foresight might convince us to find new ways to use the Canadian monarchy rather than try to lose it. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday June 9, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 9, 2022

October 29, 2014

‘A clear crisis’: Ontario voter turnout prompts renewed calls for electoral reform

Advocacy groups are renewing calls for electoral reform in Ontario after Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives were re-elected with another majority last week despite historically low voter turnout and most voters casting ballots for other parties — though experts say it’s likely a non-starter.

In the June 2 election, 40 per cent voted for the Progressive Conservatives, handing the party 83 seats. Close to 53 per cent in total voted for the NDP, Liberals and Greens, but those parties will have a combined 40 seats. The Liberals won nearly a quarter of the popular vote but will hold just eight of the 124 available seats. Turnout was a record-low 43 per cent.

“The Ontario election results were a gross misrepresentation of what voters said with their ballots,” read a Twitter post from Fair Vote Canada, an organization that supports moving to a proportional system. “Majority governments should have the consent of a majority of voters.”

Electoral reform advocates says the Ontario results prove the province should scrap the first-past-the-post system, in which voters pick one candidate in their riding and the person with the most votes wins. The successful candidate doesn’t need to win a majority of votes to take the riding.

September 11, 2007

Many would like to see proportional representation, under which the percentage of seats a party holds would reflect their share of the popular vote.

Cameron Anderson, a political science professor at Western University, said people are understandably frustrated with the outcome, though he noted that the results could have been murkier if, for example, the party with the most votes didn’t win enough seats to form government.

“It was a fairly decisive victory among those who cast ballots, but the aftermath is what it is, and it’s unpalatable to many, for sure,” he said in an interview.

Amid calls for change, Anderson noted that supporters of the current system can make the case that majority governments offer stability without disruption or fear of snap elections. He also pointed to referendums on electoral reform that have been held in a number of Canadian provinces — including in Ontario — that ended up sticking with the status quo.

In 2007, Ontarians voted against a mixed-member proportional voting system. That model — which the NDP campaigned on this time around — tries to lend some of the stability of the first-past-the-post system to a fully proportional government, by having some legislators elected in local districts and others from party lists.

September 3, 2021

“Changing the system is not easy and is no panacea,” Anderson said, adding that finding compromise or agreement on a new system is challenging when balancing the interests of citizens and political parties.

Three of the four major parties promised to change the province’s electoral system during the 2022 campaign. But Ford, maintaining that his party received a clear mandate, ruled out the possibility the day after the election.

“I think this system has worked for over 100 and some odd years. It’s going to continue to work that way,” he told reporters.

The federal Liberal government also promised — and failed to deliver on — electoral reform.

While campaigning in 2015, Justin Trudeau said the federal election held that year would be the last to use the first-past-the-post method, a pledge he would ultimately renege on. (CBC)