That's Too Much Dirt to Sweep Under the RCMP Carpet. Who Am I Kidding?

RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson has a bag just full of cash. He's hoping it's enough to make a huge problem just go away.

Paulson has $100-million tax dollars to settle harassment and sexual abuse claims by between 500 and 1,000 female members of the force. Oh yeah, Paulson upped the ante when he got teary and apologized at a press conference, praising the female officers for their bravery and courage.

So, what's missing? Oh yeah, that huge wicker basket full of heads of those who harassed and abused those female members and the top brass who, for so long, looked the other way until their hands were forced.

Then again this is Paulson, the commish who signed off on the 31-count indictment in the "immaculate bribe" case against Mike Duffy only to see each count, all 31, shot down in flames by the trial judge who pointed out the obvious - the RCMP not only didn't get their man, Duffy, but avoided getting the real culprits.

So Commander Cash & Tears appears intent on soldiering on. As for the rest of us, we have another demonstration that there's no limit on the amount of dirt that can be swept underneath the RCMP's carpet.

Will Sergeant Horton Please Take the Stand

There's a critical aspect to the Duffy trial that we're not going to get out of Harper's PMO staff or his "loyal unto death" shills in the Senate or the Conservative Party executive.

It's an aspect that goes to what appears to be a political prosecution that, it could be argued, calls justice into disrepute thereby violating Duffy's Charter rights.

It goes from then corporal, now sergeant Horton, the investigating officer straight up to the commissioner, Hank Paulson.  Did they "fix" the investigation of the Wright-Duffy scandal in the only way possible to nail Duffy and take everyone else off the hook?  Was this a setup by the state police apparatus?  Has the national police service become just another partisan political agency doing the bidding of Shifty Steve Harper?

I haven't found anyone who gets the concept of Precium Immaculata, the Immaculate Bribe, in which the person who transmitted the proceeds of a crime, the bribe, is cleared of any offence, leaving only the person to whom those proceeds of crime were transmitted to take the rap.  No one, nobody understands that.

Nobody understood that at the time it was announced Wright would face no charges and now that we've peered inside, through the masses of emails, this thing reeks of a set up.

We need to know just what sergeant Horton did as he amassed witness statements and processed the email dump.  What role did Paulson and his boss, Vic Toews, play in shaping the investigation? Who saw the evidence? Was the prime minister let in on everything? How many times did he meet with Paulson immediately before Duffy was charged and in the months afterward? Was Shifty ever treated as a possible suspect?

There's a very bad smell to this and a lot of questions that need answers.  Call sergeant Horton to the stand.

Of Alchemists and the Apparent Obstruction of Justice.

Where's Vic's Other Hand?

At this point, it wouldn't matter if Duffy went to the gallows. Hank Paulson, Commissioner or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has some explaining to do.

Just on email evidence alone, the Duffy case is emerging as a political prosecution.  A stench fell over the RCMP investigation right from the start when Paulson sent an email to all his senior officers absolutely forbidding contact with MPs and Senators without his (Vic Toews') express approval.

...the commissioner said that meetings or lunches with parliamentarians "can have unintended and/or negative consequences for the organization and the government. Therefore, should you or your staff receive such requests, I am directing that you advise my office and the chief strategic policy and planning officer."

...Toews's office did not respond to a request to explain the new policy. Paulson's office, however, confirmed that it was co-managed with the minister's office.

Some recipient of that email thought it ought to be leaked - to the CBC. It was conclusive of nothing but it did raise a few eyebrows.  Then followed the investigations - of Duffy, Wallin, Harb, Brazeau.  When it came to Duffy it showed that the mounties always do get their man - but just the one.  Cash comes out of the ether - innocent enough - until it reaches Duffy's hands and then it becomes a bribe.  Who says alchemy isn't real? Why it was positively Biblical, in the Immaculate Conception sense.  A bribe with only one criminal, Duffy. There you have it - an Immaculate Investigation followed by an Immaculate Prosecution of an Immaculate Offence. 

It takes a curious mind, perhaps bordering on the unhinged, to abuse logic this badly, to stand it on its head.  And where do we see that today?  In a prime minister who "rejects the premise" of the facts that just keep mounting up, pointing an ever bigger finger right at him. I remember reading about a fellow who was trapped in an underground bunker as enemy troops moved in who rejected the premise of what was happening in favour of magical thinking, imagining divisions of soldiers that no longer existed would come to his rescue and miraculously turn the tables just in the nick of time.  His senior commanders also had to stand by his side, anxiously eyeing the exits as they wondered when he would finally end it.

Meanwhile, in a courtroom in Ottawa, Donald Bayne is just beginning to unpack email and documentary evidence of what really went on in Shifty Harper's underground bunker, the PMO, and it bears no resemblance to the fables spun by the prime minister.  He's got a stack of documents, about 800 in all, mainly generated by Harper's own General Staff, and he's using them to great effect to undermine the credibility of the government's witnesses, Harper's generals, to lay the foundation for impeaching the credibility of prominent generals yet to be called, and to steadily bolster his client's defence that it wasn't a bribe, it was a deal that was forced on the Cavendish Cottager.  It must be dispiriting to Harper's generals knowing that soon they too will have to run the gauntlet of their own words.

Bayne has only gotten into Nigel Wright and a bit of Novak and just a smattering of Perrin and already the PMO narrative is beginning to succumb to inconsistencies and contradictions even concealment of evidence and outright lies to apparently cooperative investigators - the very stuff of obstruction of justice.  Yet no one was charged - except Duffy. It's as though some power from above drew a cordon sanitaire around the PMO, the Tory Senate and the Conservative Party executive.

Seasoned investigators are trained to detect the faintest whiff of these things. Yet this carried the gut-wrenching stench of a tannery and somehow passed the investigatorial smell test.  How? How out of this steaming pile of offal could emerge the theory of the Immaculate Bribe, Precium Immaculata?

Why were none of these others not charged, if not for conspiracy then for obstruction of justice? With these characters you could stage a Wagnerian opera. These are not the sort of insignificant issues that lend themselves to forgetfulness. Not with that many people in on it, not with that mountain of emails. This was a major deal involving a bevy of very powerful, prominent individuals each acting in concert with the other.  If their stories don't match up seamlessly, chances are it's because some of them, perhaps all of them, are lying to manipulate investigators, to obstruct justice, to obtain a perverted judicial outcome.

The alchemists have failed.  Lead (Pb) and Gold (Au) are distinct elements on the Periodic Table. You can't turn one into another.  And if you "reject the premise" then people are going to have to conclude that you're either crazy or hopelessly bent.

The state police must be investigated this time. There has to be an enquiry into these shenanigans that goes straight to the top. It's overdue. It is time for Paulson and company to explain themselves, to answer tough questions with credible, verifiable answers. We need to know if Duffy was made a sacrificial goat and why the others were shielded behind such a flimsy, incredible "premise."

Ooh, This Is Beginning to Reek of RCMP and Richard Nixon

As the Mike Duffy trial begins to dissolve in the Crown's hands, it's coming to smell like a political drive-by hit.  Steve Harper's attempts to distance himself from it only makes the stench worse.

Michael Harris looks at Sideshow Steve and sees visions of Richard Milhous Nixon.

While the Judge publicly rattled the Crown’s case against Duffy, Stephen Harper blundered in parliament by fumbling the ball on the five yard line. In Question Period, under queries from NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, Harper pulled the standard Harper move — suggesting that Mike Duffy was to blame if his actual residency disqualified him from taking a Senate seat from PEI.

“Mr. Speaker, according to constitutional practice, all senators must make such a declaration [of residency]. As members know, it is Mr. Duffy’s actions that are before the court right now.”

This is a dude in the closet.

One hundred gallons of Kool Aid chugalugged in a minute are required to believe Harper’s absurd attempt to say, for the hundredth time, that the prime minister of Canada is responsible for absolutely nothing when things go south politically.

Not responsible for putting a felon in his office as an advisor (Bruce Carson); not responsible for putting an accused felon in charge of Canada’s deepest security secrets (Arthur Porter); not responsible for keeping a parliamentary secretary gainfully employed who may now be on his way to prison (Dean del Mastro.)

Visions of Nixon: If your prime minister does it, it’s not a crime.

Here is the constitutional truth about Duffy and the Senate. Both the Prime Minister and the Governor General have the obligation to assure that an appointee is eligible for an appointment to the Senate before they are elevated. The GG accepts the appointment on the advice of the PM, not the nominee. They not only blew it, they knowingly blew it — unless the PM is going for the Hans Christian Anderson Award for fairly tales; that he was the only guy in Ottawa who didn’t know where Mike Duffy — or Pamela Wallin for that matter — really lived.

Of course Steve knew what was going on.  This is, after all, the micro-manager in chief, Canada's CEO, Chairman of the Board.  He's also demonstrated, time and again, that he's a chronic, if clumsy, liar.  Steve lies with an expectation that others will accept what he says without too much scrutiny.  When one lie falls apart, he simply substitutes another.  

Yeah, sure, Steve needs to be hauled into court and put under oath.  He has a lot of explaining to do and lies floated on the floor of the Commons are no substitute.  But there's something else that demands close scrutiny - the top cop in the RCMP, Commissioner Bob Paulson.

The Crown may be looking hapless but those prosecutors are working with the load of garbage dumped on them by the Royal Conservative Mounted Police.  It was these cops who decided that Duffy had committed what has been called "Immaculate Bribery."  It was criminal for Duffy to receive the money but there was nothing criminal in the giving of the bribe, even with the conditions attached to it.  Really, Bob?  You really signed off on that?  As investigations go, this one is pure political Kabuki theatre.  Is Paulson Steve Harper's lap dog or did Steve have to hit him a couple of times with a rolled up newspaper first?

As long as the Prince of Darkness has a majority, Paulson won't have to account to opposition MPs for the RCMP's role in this Potemkin investigation.  I'd bet that if you could look in the top drawer of Paulson's desk you would find his resignation letter already signed, ready to go in case Paulson has to bail out in a hurry.

Bush's Going Out of Business Sale

We all know the scam: Wall Street, having pillaged and plundered the global economy, isn't done with larceny, not while the American government is handing out cash in multi-hundred billion dollar denominations.

A couple of weeks ago a wiley New York Times reporter managed to access an internal JP Morgan Chase executive conference call during which someone asked how the government's 35-billion dollar handout would be transformed into new credit for the bank's customers as intended. The answer was chilling - that money, given to free up credit facilities, wasn't going where intended. The bank instead pocketed the money, deciding to use it to fund its own welfare in the form of future merger and acquisition opportunities. Memo to Capitol Hill - don't hand bags of money to a thief. He's a thief, he'll just steal it. It's what they do.

This bail out plan smelled rotten from the outset. A big part of that stench came from the man who engineered it, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a guy who slid into that job from his previous post as head of Goldman Sachs. As though that background wasn't bad enough, the givewaway that this was going to be a trillion dollar "giveaway" should have been obvious when Paulson initially insisted that he be allowed to dole out the money without oversight and free from any congressional or court challenge.

Wait a minute! Wasn't Paulson up to his alligators in scam derivatives and, worse, Credit Default Swaps before he went to Washington? Wasn't he one of the top bottom-dealers who had wrecked America's economy and left much of the rest of the world reeling? Wasn't he the poster boy of the "Greed is Good" crowd?

Paulson got his hands on the loot anyway and began doling it out - to his friends - the boys he'll again be sharing highballs with soon enough. Won't he be the darling of that select crowd when he gets back in town?

Make no mistake, Paulson isn't finished yet. Just today he tried on another gambit to see if anyone is watching, anyone with enough cojones to stop him. From The New York Times:

"Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said Wednesday that the $700 billion government rescue program would not be used to purchase troubled assets as originally planned.

Mr. Paulson said the administration would continue to use $250 billion of the program to purchase stock in banks as a way to bolster their balance sheets and encourage them to resume more normal lending.

Mr. Paulson said 40 percent of the nation’s consumer credit was provided through selling securities that are backed by pools of auto loans and other such debt. He said these markets had “for all practical purposes ground to a halt” and needed support.

“With the Federal Reserve we are exploring the development of a potential liquidity facility for highly-rated AAA asset-backed securities,” he said. “We are looking at ways to... ...encourage private investors to come back to this troubled market, by providing them access to federal financing while protecting the taxpayers’ investment. By doing so, we can lower costs and increase credit availability for consumers.”

The announcement marked a major shift for the administration, which had talked only about purchasing troubled assets as it lobbied Congress to pass the sweeping bailout bill.

Mr. Paulson said the administration had decided that using billions of dollars to buy troubled assets of financial institutions at the current time was “not the most effective way” to use the $700 billion bailout package."

What Paulson means, if you read between the lines, is using the bailout fund for direct capital infusion into Wall Street firms to "encourage" them to begin lending again. They need a hell of a lot more than a little encouragement, Hank. Maybe propose a couple of years under federal receivership instead. I think that'd see a lot of credit lines re-opened.

The Wrong Guy to Rescue America?

If, as has been widely claimed, the real Achilles' Heel to the global financial meltdown, lies in $60-trillion dollars of bogus Credit Default Swaps dumped into the markets by American financial giants, how wise is it to rely on the recent head of one of those very companies to rescue America from this very curse?

Just read the Wikipedia biography of Henry Paulson and you decide:

Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972.[7] He then worked for the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon, serving as assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973.

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm's Chicago office for Manmeet Taneja. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998;[8] eventually succeeding Jon Corzine (now Governor of New Jersey) as its chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US$37 million in 2005, and US$16.4 million projected for 2006.[9] His net worth has been estimated at over US$700 million.[9] Paulson has personally built close relations with China during his career. In July 2008 it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that: "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has intimate relations with the Chinese elite, dating from his days at Goldman Sachs when he visited the country more than 70 times."[10]

[edit] Tenure at and later relationship with Goldman Sachs

In 2004, at the request of the major Wall Street investment houses, including Goldman Sachs, then headed by Paulson, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed unanimously to release the major investment houses from the net capital rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure. The complaint that was put forth by the investment banks was of increasingly onerous regulatory requirements -- in this case, not U.S. regulator oversight, but European Union regulation of the foreign operations of US investment groups. In the immediate lead-up to the decision, EU regulators also acceded to US pressure, and agreed not to scrutinize foreign firms' reserve holdings if the SEC agreed to do so instead. The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, however, put the parent holding company of each of the big American brokerages beyond SEC oversight. In order for the agreement to go ahead, the investment banks lobbied for a decision that would allow "voluntary" inspection of their parent and subsidiary holdings by the SEC.

During this repeal of the net capital rule, SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson agreed to the establishment of a risk management office that would monitor signs of future problems. This office was eventually dismantled by Chairman Christopher Cox, after discussions with Paulson. According to the New York Times, "While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Mr. Paulson, the [new] Treasury secretary, that proposed to reduce their stature — and that of the S.E.C. — Mr. Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the agency."[11]

In late September 2008, Chairman Cox and the other Commissioners agreed to end the 2004 program of voluntary regulation.

I don't know but it sure sounds to me as though Paulson was one of the key players who were gaming the American economy with these toxic, Credit Default Swaps, that created the Wall Street house of cards that now lies flattened.