By VERONIQUE DERUGY and EILEEN NORCROSS

President Barack Obama has promised a full accounting online of where his $787 stimulus package is spent and to expose to public ridicule anyone caught wasting taxpayer money. At a White House news conference in March, the president put it this way: “If we see money being misspent, we’re going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it.” Unfortunately, the president’s deeds don’t match his words.

True transparency requires putting specific details of every government expenditure online, where citizens can review them and spot wasteful spending. Several states are already doing just that and finding that citizens and taxpayer groups make great watchdogs.

In Missouri last August, the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union (NTU), discovered more than $2.4 million spent for questionable purposes over the past eight years, including purchases from bakeries, beauty salons and women’s lingerie stores.

Thanks to NTU and Missouri’s willingness to put its expenses out for public review, we know that state officials spent $15,482.57 at Ann’s Bra Shop in St. Louis (expenses listed as “professional services” and “clothing supplies”). Government employees also spent more than $1.6 million at coffee shops, $387,210.14 at framing stores, $278,053.46 at florists and nurseries, and $70,849.02 at bakeries. Other dubious expenditures included $936.75 spent at The Corsage Shop in New Madrid, Mo., and $3,010 at the Westside Barber Shop (the disclosure forms didn’t indicate which of the several in the state).

After receiving thousands of letters from unhappy state residents, Republican Gov. Matt Blunt asked the state’s Office of Administration in August to review the expenditures. “This is exactly what we expected and envisioned when we created the MAP [Missouri Accountability Portal],” Mr. Blunt said in a statement. “Transparency and openness help root out wasteful spending and we welcome this scrutiny.”

…read more HERE

Tony Blair’s Britain. Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and the Ministry Of Silly Walks puts its foot down;

Larry Dewitt, Health and Safety adviser to the circus, believes that wearing clown shoes is “stupid” — especially in light of a Moscow State Circus clown who fell down and hurt his foot. The practice is therefore forbidden.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals who found the blog post below and wrote the commentary above:

Clowns Forbidden to Wear Clown Shoes

The officious rodents responsible for forbidding every last aspect of life that they deem potentially harmful are having to look hard to find new menaces. In Britain, clowns have been told they can’t wear clown shoes, lest they trip and hurt themselves.

Larry Dewitt, Health and Safety adviser to the circus, believes that wearing clown shoes is “stupid” — especially in light of a Moscow State Circus clown who fell down and hurt his foot. The practice is therefore forbidden.

Formal legislation against clown shoes to follow.

Source of above comment HERE

Full story in the UK Telegraph HERE

excerpt from a Hugh Hewitt interview with Mark Steyn on Apr. 24th/09

 HH: Oh, how interesting. All right, we’ll come back to that. I want to stay on the ruthless theme, though, and turn to President Obama. Today in the New York Times, there are these two sentences: “Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in CIA interrogators.” There, Mark Steyn, is the whole explanation for the witch hunt he has launched this week.

MS: Yes, I think that’s likely to happen. I think given that we’re now, we’ve reset the clock to September the 10th. We’re now in a world of legalism. In fact, it’s worse than September 10th, because if you look at some of the decisions that are being taken, we’re effectively extending the protections of the United States Constitution to people who are foreign nationals in foreign countries who’ve never set foot in this country. I think that’s a disaster, but I think you’re right that in a sense, discrediting, discrediting the Bush approach, which has kept America safe for eight years now, I think that has to be part of the calculation just in terms of political protection down the road.

HH: Now I introduced Ed Meese at a Heritage luncheon a couple of hours ago at the Century Plaza Hotel, and when I did that, I paused for a moment to reflect on what a radical break the Obama direction is with American history. When Reagan arrives, he doesn’t attempt to criminalize what Carter did. When W. arrives, he doesn’t attempt to criminalize what Bill Clinton did. It, in fact, he stressed continuity, did not want to look into why we were not ready for 9/11, et cetera, et cetera. This is very different, Mark Steyn, and it’s perilous. The criminalization of past political differences is something that, Mark, the Royalists and the Roundheads for years, but not America.

MS: Right. Yeah, well in the modern era, it’s South Africa after apartheid, or Czechoslovakia after communism. And for some reason, Obama seems attracted to that model rather than simply saying well, we had an election in a two party system, in a continuous Constitutional republic that’s been doing this for two and a third centuries now, and this time instead of Party A winning, Party B winning. He could look at it like that. But as you say, the left has chosen to criminalize politics. It’s not enough to say well, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have a different view of this than we do. That’s not enough. It’s not enough. They’ve got to actually say no, it’s beyond that. Dick Cheney’s opinion, and George W. Bush’s opinion are criminal. And they have to be criminalized. And I think this is horribly damaging. This is horribly damaging in the most basic sense to political stability and to the functioning of a two party system.

HH: It also inevitably is going to wound a lot of people who have no idea they’re in the line of fire. One person who does understand their political peril is Nancy Pelosi. Here is a comment she made earlier today. Listen to this very carefully, America. You can hear furious and ineffective spinning from the Speaker.

NP: At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I…that I…that…that I was briefed on in that regard. We were not, I repeat, we…not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had some, uh, legislative counsel, the office of legislative counsel opinions that they could be used, but not that they would, and they further…further, the point was that if and when they would be used, they would brief Congress at that time.

HH: Mark Steyn, she just admitted to being at a briefing wherein interrogation techniques in these OLC memos were discussed. That’s fascinating.

MS: Yes, and it’s the usual Democrat thing, thought, that oh well, it’s like their votes on the war, where effectively as the years went by, they said well, we had no idea what we were voting for. Nancy Pelosi is basically saying now well, I had no idea what I was being told. I had no idea what I was being told. This will lead to people dying. And it may not, they may not die in the United States. They may die in some other city somewhere around the world. But people will die, because we are not able to…the question isn’t really one of waterboarding. It’s a question now of low level officials in suits in Washington, whether they feel they can give honest, legal opinion to the best of their professional knowledge, or whether those memos are going to be dredged up in five, six years time, and they’re going to be in a four year investigation. They’re going to be keeping A list lawyers on the payroll, and they’re going to be in hell. They’re going to lose half a decade of their life trying to dig themselves out of the hole of having given advice to the president of the United States. That is simply ensuring that the president of the United States, in the middle of a war, is not going to receive the best advice.

HH: Mark Steyn, David Ignatius in the Washington Post, no centrist he, yesterday, the New York Times today, what I read to you, are proving up the point that Tim Weiner made in his book, Legacy Of Ashes. When you go after agencies, their behavior changes, and they cripple themselves. And in the middle of a war, I think this is the point you just made, that means we are dismantling the national security in front of our eyes. We’ve got about a minute to break.

MS: Yeah, and I think you’re right. And I think this is the stupidity of the Democrat position. And the reality is that intelligence agencies in France and the United Kingdom and other places do not operate under these constraints, so that the President will be in effect getting more reliable intelligence from foreign intelligence agencies than he’s going to be getting from rear end-covering bureaucrats in his own government.

HH: If they choose to continue to work with us given the highly unpredictable approach that President Obama has adopted. Mark Steyn, www.steynonline.com, America, thank you.

 To read the entire article go HERE

To read Mark’s latest posting on his website “THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS – THE POST-AMERICAN ERA? go HERE

 Posted on Ezra Levant’s website who has been in hounded by the HRC since publishing the Danish Cartoons years ago, and recent author of Shakedown which details the corruption inside the HRC’s of the land. 

Catherine Ford: “liberals… need to read Shakedown”
By Ezra Levant on April 19, 2009 3:42 AM

Catherine Ford, the retired editor and columnist at the Calgary Herald, has reviewed Shakedown in that paper. Ford made a career out of zigging where Calgary zagged — she is a self-described “liberal feminist” in Canada’s most conservative city.

Her review is a mix of flattering praise and political criticism. But given how polar opposite we are philosophically, I’m blown away by how positive her review is.

Just for fun, I did a historical search to see what Ford had written over the years about Alberta’s human rights commission. She’s had mixed things to say about them — she obviously saw their political champions as her fellow travellers, but she was also aware of their abusive tendencies.

Here’s a column she wrote way back in 1992, when the HRC found that a young male driver had the “human right” to pay as little car insurance as a young female driver, actuarial risk statistics be damned. She called the HRC a “horse’s ass”, which sounds about right.

Here’s a more troubling column she wrote in May of 1997, where she approved of using HRCs to rough up people who had an anti-semitic view of history:

Personally, I’m all for harassing the revisionists through whatever tribunals are available, thus exposing them to contempt and showing children that such ignorance is rightfully dealt with through public scorn.

But Ford got that wrong in a big way: it’s not the government’s job to harass people through abusive legal processes, even if they are ignorant, and that’s a terrible lesson in bullying and censorship to teach children. I agree that public scorn is a powerful tool to be used against bigots, but that’s the job of private citizens and newspaper pundits, not the state with its prosecutors, fines and gag orders.

I was pleased to see Ford change her tune later that same year, in this column, where she wrote:

…the continuing efforts to censor the tired rantings of Holocaust deniers such as Ernst Zundel [are] so pointless, so wearying, so expensive.

…The proper counterattack is not whining to human rights commissions, but a rigorous program of education for anyone exposed to this garbage, especially children.

That’s a pretty big about-face in seven months — from touting the HRCs’ harassment to calling HRCs an improper approach suitable only for whiners. I’m always leery of her solution: political “education” campaigns by the government. That’s usually just another word for propaganda, but at least kids can ignore their indoctrinators, and their parents can correct them too. It’s far less tyrannical than an abusive HRC with its force of law.

Here’s Ford’s review of Shakedown. Looking over it again right now, I have to say I’m amazed how flattering she is. If I can’t get an arch-lefty like Ford to be truly mad at me, something’s out of synch!

Ezra Levant is a smart man. Ezra Levant has good ideas.

Ezra Levant is a lawyer. Why this triad of competence doesn’t come together in a pivotal book that could be instrumental in addressing the glaring problems of Canadian human rights commissions and tribunals and in changing them is simple: Ezra Levant is also a polemicist.

To the liberal reader, he’s not interested in changing Canada for the better, despite his many convincing arguments, but in expressing his particular skewed version of the country and the institutions charged with hearing the aggrieved.

Levant rants. He doesn’t listen. He wants people on his side, not necessarily on the side of what’s best for everyone, including those Canadians who aren’t big or small-C conservatives.

…Shakedown lays [it] all out — the outrageous decisions made by human rights commissions across the country, the two-facedness of liberals, feminists, gay rights activists, at which Levant takes many gratuitous swipes. Levant, as all good polemicists do, cherry-picks the facts and couches his arguments in language and imagery designed to enrage social conservatives who see such advances as the rights of women and minorities not to be treated as second-class men as an assault on their rightful position at the top of the food chain. In the doing, he also infuriates liberals. That sort of prunes one’s reading audience.

…Shakedown has a solid and compelling foundation–what good is free speech and freedom of the press if any malcontent can cite “hurt feelings” and bring the parties responsible in front of a quasi-judicial, politically appointed panel of amateur judges? Worse, to do so at no cost, not even if the complaint is judged frivolous or without merit? At the very least, anyone wasting taxpayers’ time and money on idiotic complaints should be charged with costs, as is usually the case in real court cases. The spectre of having to pay for your own lawyer to deal with your hissy-fit keeps our courts relatively free of nonsense.

Canadians who want their country to be fair and open to all — liberals to a fault, I guess — need to read Shakedown. They could have been persuaded to do so if the author had chosen to put less of his own ideology into the mix and more of his considerable talents and experience into a book designed to encourage change.

He ends the book with a look at possible reforms. And had fair-minded Canadians encountered more of that earlier in the book, Levant’s cause might be adopted by all of us. He outlines the two schools of thought: the “pruners” and the “weeders,” allying himself with the latter.

…The whole point of trying to convince Canadians of all political leanings to read this book is contained in one of the author’s final statements: “…Canadians now bend over backward to demonstrate our respect for others–both officially, through affirmative action and multiculturalism policies, and unofficially, in the way thirty-three million of us treat our friends, neighbours and co-workers.”

And even a liberal feminist can get onside and applaud that.

 To get Ezra’s book go HERE

To get to his excellent website go HERE