The Senator Mike Duffy trial continues, exposing more of the compost heap. For those not fully apprised of the contents of the testimony so far, here’s a reasonable recap.
If you’re too lazy this Saturday morning to click a link, this is the short form: Duffy as a Senator gets a budget to about $150,000 a year for the office and research. Like all Parliamentary budgets, it’s on the basis of use it or lose it, meaning come March 31 any money left gets pulled and you start April 1 with a new pile of money for the office and research. So if you’ve had a lazy year and spent most of it making puppies, there is this budget number that seems to demand you spend it.
In the simplest of fiddles, you order a bunch of stuff and make sure the invoices all say March 31. The budget used up, everyone goes on their merry way and some buddies get cash for oh, communications consulting?
Having been on the vendor side more than a few times, we used to call it March Madness. There were stories about companies that would ship boxes of phone books or bare chassis computers to the client that would arrive, be received and the appropriate weight duly entered into the books. Since it was on the government shipping dock by March 31, it was deemed delivered, the invoice duly paid and as long as nobody looked to hard, life went on. Speechwriting and research contracts? As long as someone in the office said they got the document, the invoice was paid. Long after March 31 would some kind of actual item truly arrive, but as long as there was something in their hands by March 31, the appropriate dollars were allocated from the appropriate year’s budget.
This speaks to exactly how people are motivated by budgets. If you don’t use what was allocated to you by intelligent, sensible mandarins who know better than you ever will, then you obviously don’t know your job, so they reduce your budget the next year, usually by the amount you didn’t spend the year previously. (/sarcasm on) After all, the wise and brilliant above you would never over-estimate what was needed, as they are intelligent, skilled, diligent guardians of the public purse, who have their fingers on the pulse of all public spending, with extensive systems, checks, balances and audit reports from consultants that back up every dollar allocated. (/sarcasm off)
Or, if you’re in the Senate, you take the unused portion of your budget and write up a contract to your buddy for a report called “The Age Wave” and have it paid for through another company, say Maple Ridge Media or Ottawa ICF, who got the lion’s share of the budget and also probably charges a fee to the Senator for ‘editorial services’ or ‘contract management’, takes their percentage over and above, then strokes you a cheque, not from the Senate, but from a private company.
On the Hill, this is perfectly normal. In private industry, this is called a ‘fuzz job’ as the source of the money and the reason for the money being spent is made as fuzzy as possible, preferably through several layers of companies. Or, you could call it money laundering, but that has such a distasteful connotation doesn’t it?
Which is why Duffy’s fitness trainer, Mike Croskery was on the stand in Ottawa last week.
Now, we do know some of the players in this game. Gerry Donohue used to be the NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians) regional union rep at a joint called CJOH-TV. He was the lead negotiator on the NABET contract and in the late 80’s/early 90’s just a negotiations were starting up, was amazingly and remarkably hired by the company to be their Human Resources guy. So you had the situation of the previous union rep sitting across the table, as the company rep, during a contract negotiation.
If this strikes you as a conflict of interest, then you don’t know Gerry Donohue.
Needless to say CJOH-TV no longer exists, having been absorbed into Bell Media, gutted, populated with interns and turned into a low-rent cable access channel with tower space on the array at Camp Fortune. Duffy used to work out of CJOH-TV back in the day and that’s most likely how he met Donohue.
Which is also why this trial for Expense Fraud and General Assholery is so much fun to watch.
Duffy is being hung out to dry because there is no real expense oversight in the Senate. As long as you don’t try to put your Miniature Weimaraner on the payroll, everything else, is fine.
The rot starts at the budget office, with the negative implications of actually saving the taxpayers some money off the various budgets. To turn it upside down and make saving budget a positive incentive, herewith our solution.
If you as a budget manager use smart thinking, creative use of suppliers, shrewd negotiations in keeping with the general Federal guidelines, act fairly and ethically, and manage to come in under budget, you personally get a cash bonus of 2% of the savings to divy up with your team. The job still gets done, the things get procured under the usual standards and if you can save money, there is no implied penalty of having your budget slashed the next year.
Budgets change every year, so if one year you didn’t need $100,000 worth of infrastructure improvements that were budgeted for and managed to safely stretch, maintain or otherwise do with what you had, instead of burning money because you could, you’d get a taste. If the next year, you really needed to spend $150,000 to keep up, then no problem. Over time, the government would come out ahead, spending when it needed to spend, based on the judgment of those who actually do the job, not on the uninformed esoteric guesstimates of bureaucrats and their consultants in their isolated silos of self-importance and business card title dick measuring.
Duffy, having been duly briefed by the Senate Budget Office, as to what he can and cannot claim, does what any punk would do, looks for the loopholes. He goes looking for the very specifics that say You cannot do X. As soon as you see that they specify X, but not Y, bill for Y. Which explains why Gerry Donohue became the defacto Royal Canadian Bank of Duffy to hide expenses under the general catchall of ‘communications and research’.
A good auditor, knowing that the Senate is populated by fart-catchers and bagmen for the party should be on high alert for exactly those kinds of fiddles, that in their former lives, the good Senators did as a matter of course, with no more moral baggage of ‘doing wrong’ than loading up on bacon at the breakfast buffet.
The wise betting line is that the Right Honourable Stephen (Call me Stephen) Harper will let this show trial play out, as a sterling example of how totally screwed the Senate is, and fortuitously add a plank to his fall campaign to remove the Senate, using Duffy as the poster child for what is wrong with the Senate and why it should be s-canned.
With any luck, it will distract the public from the real mess, Bill C-51 or the Ministry of Finance’s three-card montie trick of a balanced budget by deferring all spending to 2017.
Mason Baveux Goes Oly
We turn the blog over to our pinch hitter Mason Baveux for his, um, unique take, on the Olympics in Sochi. Mason?
Thanks for bloggery Davey as you know I watch er close enough for four people, let alone just meself.
The Openin Ceremonials were what I’d expect from a country what was Commie for so long. It looks like they sold off the producin rights to the drug-addled dope heads what did the French Winter Olys in 1992 in Albertville. There was dancers flyin all over the place while they shot pictures down on the arena floor and then reenacted the Battle of Kursk with flyin rigs and no tanks. Plus they left out the bit about Stalin killin about a third of the population when he woke up from a four-day vodka toot. Not all of us are as forgetful as that, doncha know. Citius, Altius, What the Fookius?
As for Sochi, there were enough stories about rooms without doors, or taps that dispensed hot and cold sewage that I don’t need to bring that back up. Oh and the shots of the main drag in Sochi havin friggin palm trees for chrissakes. Jesus Mary and Gord, do those dough-heads at the IOC not check an atlas before they give up the rights? It seems they got snow alright, if you consider ground up ice that’s sloppier than the ex-wife’s twat to be real snow-snow. Crap lads, hold the Winter Olys somewheres they have Winter. Should maybe write that down as Rule #1.
I was all wound up to report on the Snowstyle Skiing what it is a new Oly sport, when I come down with a case of of the flu what caused me to be on my arse for near close a week. They fed me full of over the counter cold medicine that when mixed up with the rum I was takin for medicinal purposes caused a couple of issues. I think Canada won some Gold Medals there, but all I could see was some girls and a couple of guys fallin down a hill arse over teakettle on skis, what then get a score. Seems you get the high score if you don’t actually die. I think I missed some in there from the medicine, so’s it not the whole story.
I want to take a moment here and talk about the Gay Right thing what was all in the papers before the Sochi Games. It’s like CCM or Bauer for skates. Some like the Taks, other like the Bauers. I’m a CCM guy, so don’t be wavin your Bauer’s at me. And don’t come round with some raggedly ass Nike skates. There just wrong and then there’s Wrong with a capital letter. I’m from the old school of what you do in private is up to you. If you like this or that equipment, that’s your choice and as long as you’re not offerin something I don’t want and are willin to accept a polite “Eff Off” then I got no issue.
When the Russian government and Vladimir Putin gets up on the back legs about the gays not bein gayish in Sochi, then maybe they should look at some of the sports, like two-man luge, ice dancin or Bobsleddin then think for another eleven seconds afore openin your borscht hole. Don’t be a bad host or a bad guest, but if your host is offerin you a roasted goat ballsack covered in chocolate sprinkles, you can just say no, politely and wait for the Chex Party Mix to come by again. A good guest don’t do nothin to offend and the host don’t offer somethin that’s goin to make people angry. A bit of give and take, is all I’m sayin.
Fancy Skatin: Patty Chan did a fine job today, nailin a Silver in the Fancy Skatin and that Japanese 19 year old kid is goin to be a killer come 2018 wherever the hell they’re hostin next. I was confused, or mebbe I didn’t hear right, but one of the Oly commentators said Patrick Chan had a chink in his armour. I didn’t near but laugh my rum across the room in a spit take that Sid Caesar woul’d laughed at and now he’s dead, don’t you know.
Girl’s Ski Jumpin: Holy Fook me! I’m for it.
Cross-Country: Mother of Pearl those folks are fit. I’d like to see them change up the biathalon though. Two loops, one clockwise, one counter, but they meet in the middle where the gun range is. No targets, except your competitors across the way. I think that’d change it up a bit and harken back to the early days of WWII when Finland took on the Russkies and damn near beat their asses.
Tag Team Luge: This’ere a new one, but I think they missed the boat. They should start side by side and be allowed to duke it out on the way down. Sort of like the bike pursuit in the Summer Olys. One chasin, and one runnin away from the other, but we’d have to say no to the spikes in the gloves.
Canada’s gettin’er done over there. And I’s back to the Benlyn with the Codeine and the Captain Morgan chaser. Later.
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